


A Reason to Stop Running

by Eienvine



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, F/M, Sifki Month, Sifki Month 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:21:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23929087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eienvine/pseuds/Eienvine
Summary: Though Loki has been estranged from his family since he learned the truth about his birth, he has no qualms about inviting himself to stay at their little-used vacation home in Jotunheim. However, the apartment is no longer uninhabited: Odin and Frigga are letting Sif stay there while she's in the area for a job. Now, a massive snowstorm has trapped Loki and Sif in the apartment together, with nothing but their complicated shared past and memories of Loki's pitiful childhood for company.This should be fun.
Relationships: Loki/Sif (Marvel)
Comments: 47
Kudos: 95





	A Reason to Stop Running

**Author's Note:**

> For Sifki Month 2020, week 1: shut in/trapped together, and bonus week: adventure/travel.
> 
> Guys, this is the longest one-shot I have ever written; I probably should break it up into chapters, but it just really wanted to be a one-shot. So get comfy, maybe grab some snacks, and settle on in. (And forgive me for any errors; I had to write this pretty fast to finish before the end of Sifki month.)
> 
> The Nine Realms here are sort of essentially Europe, so when we talk about football, we mean what Americans would call soccer. (Except Midgard. Midgard is America. Couldn't tell you why, it just feels like America.)
> 
> Also, I made Odin pretty terrible here. I don’t know, he just wanted to be terrible. So my apologies to any ardent Odin fans reading this.

. . . . . .

Snow is falling lightly as the taxi leaves the airport, but by the time they’ve reached the center of town, it has turned into a proper blizzard: fat, fluffy white flakes, falling so thick that the taxi driver can scarcely see ten feet in front of his car and is forced to creep along, so that the drive takes forty minutes instead of twenty.

Loki, shivering as he looks out the window, wonders why these cars never have heater vents in the backseat, and is deeply grateful when the buildings passing by start to look more familiar. An eternity after leaving the Utgard International Airport, the taxi finally pulls up in front of an apartment building, only thirty years old but designed to match the ancient buildings around it.

“Thank you” is all he tells the dark-haired driver in Jotun, because chewing him out for how cold the car is wouldn’t do much good—not his fault there’s no heater vents in the back—and because he doesn’t actually know enough Jotun to say all that (ironic that he speaks little Jotun, really, all things considered). He pays the man and gets his suitcase from the trunk, and hurries quickly into the warm lobby as the taxi pulls away into the dark night.

There’s no doorman at the desk—maybe he stepped away to use the bathroom or something. Loki’s glad of it; Odin might have left instructions that he’s to be contacted if Loki visits one of the family’s various properties . . . or maybe he’s told the doorman to deny Loki access. (The latter doesn’t seem likely, but then the whole problem here is that he’s never understood Odin as well as he thought he did. So he supposes anything’s possible.) He hurries to the elevator, travels to the sixth floor, and makes his way to the apartment in the corner.

His key slides into the lock smoothly and turns easily, and Loki takes a moment to be grateful; his other fear had been that they’d sold the apartment, or at least changed the locks, since the last time he saw Odin and Frigga. After all, this is the family’s least-used residence (which is the only reason he was willing to come here), so, again, anything’s possible.

He walks into the dark apartment and sets his suitcase down with a relieved sigh. He always liked this apartment, and preferred the family’s infrequent visits to Jotunheim to their many other vacations and vacation homes. Preferred being here to being at their gorgeous mansion in Gladsheim, too.

Maybe that should have been his first clue that he isn’t Asgardian, come to think of it.

The living room has the most amazing windows, floor to ceiling, looking out over the lights of Utgard; when he was a kid, Loki would sneak out of bed to sit on the floor and gaze out at the streetlights and stone buildings of the old heart of town, and past that, at the lights of the skyscrapers in the new downtown. And that’s where he goes now, not even bothering to turn on the lights first, wanting to enjoy the view in all its splendor.

In the dark living room he runs into an armchair that wasn’t in that spot the last time he was here—apparently someone did some redecorating in the last decade?—and mutters a curse under his breath. But then he’s at the windows, and he pulls back the curtains with a flourish. The familiar sight of the city spreading out before him relaxes the tension he’s been carrying in his shoulders. And he stands and watches the snowflakes swirl past the streetlights below.

Until he hears a faint creak, close behind him, and turns to see a shadowy figure nearly upon him, preparing to swing what appears to be a cricket bat.

“Whoa!” is all he can think to cry out, arms instinctively coming up as though he can stop the cricket bat with his bare hands.

The figure stops. “Loki?” says a feminine voice, and the figure melts into the shadows again until suddenly the living room lights turn on.

He winces against the sudden brightness until his eyes have adjusted enough to see the figure by the light switches on the far side of the room: trim athletic build, chin-length dark hair, dressed in pajamas. And he stares. “Sif?”

. . . . . .

_“Why do you have a cricket bat?”_

_Sif looks at Loki with all the exasperation a ten-year-old can muster. “So I can play cricket, duh.”_

_“Girls don’t play cricket,” Thor says, brimming with juvenile self-importance. “Sports are for boys.”_

_Sif promptly tackles Thor to the ground, and it takes a few minutes for the adults downstairs to hear the thumping and come up to investigate, so for those few minutes Loki gets a front row seat for the supremely satisfying spectacle of Thor being pummeled by a girl._

_“Stop it!” Thor demands._

_“Make me!” Sif retorts._

_“I don’t hit girls!”_

_“Maybe you shouldn’t make fun of girls either!”_

_“I didn’t make fun of you! Loki, make her stop!”_

_“I don’t hit girls either,” Loki shrugs. Truth be told he’s never thought much about his philosophy on hitting girls, though he knows his mother would disapprove of the activity. Really, he’s just allowing this to continue because it’s funny._

_“Sif! What on earth are you doing?” demands Sif’s father Tyr, running into the room._

_“She just attacked me!” Thor insists, backing away now that Sif’s onslaught has slowed._

_“He said girls can’t play sports!” Sif retorts angrily._

_“You were supposed to show them your room, not have a brawl,” Sif’s mother Gná scolds. “That’s not very ladylike behavior.”_

_Frigga’s eyes are dancing with mirth, but Odin frowns at Loki. “Why didn’t you stop this, Loki?”_

_“It’s not my fault!” Loki shoots back indignantly. “Thor started it! Why aren’t you mad at him?”_

_“That’s not what I meant—” Odin begins, but Loki is pushing his way through the crowd of adults at the door, his eyes burning with unshed tears at the unfairness of it all, at how—though he won’t have the vocabulary to articulate this for a few more years—their father seems to hold Loki to a different standard of behavior than he does Thor._

_He flies through the unfamiliar house and manages to find his way into the back garden, where he runs to a tree in the far corner and drops onto the ground, hugging his legs to his chest and burying his face in his knees and trying not to cry._

_That’s where Sif finds him a few minutes later. “Me and Thor are in trouble,” she says matter-of-factly, dropping to the dirt beside him. “Your mum and dad are talking to Thor, but my mum sent me out here to find you. But I’ll be in trouble later, I can tell.” She puts on a good approximation of her father’s voice. “‘We’re trying to meet all our new neighbors so you can make friends, not so you can start fights.’”_

_Loki snorts, then asks curiously, “So why did you fight Thor?”_

_“He was being mean,” Sif shrugs, and Loki stares at her in awe. He has spent his life glued to his brother’s side—they’re only thirteen months apart in age, and Loki is bright enough that they had him skip second grade, so they’ve been in the same class at school for a couple years now—and in ten years, that’s the first time he’s heard anyone say anything negative about his brother. “Do you think he was being mean?” she adds._

_“Yes,” says Loki, who actually hadn’t thought much about it either way until this moment but who suddenly knows he would do or say anything to make this girl think well of him. “He shouldn’t have said that. Girls can play sports. They can play any sport they want.”_

_Sif’s face breaks into a wide grin. “Want to play on the swings?”_

. . . . . .

Loki recovers first. “What are you doing here?”

Sif is staring at him, wide-eyed—small wonder, it’s been over a year since anyone from his old life has seen him—but she pulls herself together enough to smile. “Living here. I got offered a temporary position on the Giants staff, so I took a leave of absence from the Warriors and came out here. Your parents offered to let me use the apartment.”

Through the glaring discomfort, he feels a spark of happiness for his old friend; the Utgard Giants are one of the best football teams in the world, and he wants to congratulate her. But the discomfort and tension steal his words, and he manages only a noncommittal "Ah."

"How did you get in here?” she asks.

He shrugs uncomfortably. “I still have keys. To . . . stuff.” Very articulate answer, Loki, well done.

“Well, that was a terrifying way to be woken up, but . . it’s really good to see you,” she says with that stunning grin that always sends a flock of butterflies loose in his abdomen, and now the discomfort is overwhelming again.

“I should go,” he says, striding toward his suitcase by the door. “I didn’t know anyone was living here. I’ll leave you alone and go find a hotel.”

“Loki.” Sif steps forward, one hand reaching out as though to grab his arm, and then seems to think better of it. “It’s after eleven. Besides, look at that snow—it’s practically Ragnarok out there. It makes no sense for you to go out into that mess to find a hotel when there are two perfectly good spare bedrooms in this apartment.”

She’s not wrong, but he can’t stay here. “No, I’d prefer to go—”

“Loki.” This time she does touch him, her hand light on his arm. She hesitates, looking up at him, then promises, “I won’t tell your parents you’re here.”

He looks away from her, trying to keep her from seeing the shame and the unhappiness he thinks must be on his face. So she knows he hasn't been speaking to his family (of course she knows; she's best friends with Thor). He wonders if she knows why.

“Just . . . please. I’ll feel awful knowing I forced you out into that storm. And I’ll worry myself sick thinking of you out there.”

And there’s no way he’s going to say no to that. He’s so uncomfortable that he wants to crawl straight out of his skin, but he can’t disappoint Sif, never could. Especially not when she’s touching him so gently, looking up into his face like it really matters to her that he’s okay.

“Fine,” he says tightly. “But I’m leaving first thing in the morning.” He bends down to pick up his suitcase, and when he straightens, he can’t quite meet her eyes, so he tells the air next to her left ear, “And don’t say anything to Thor either.”

“I won’t,” she promises, and looks like she wants to say more, so he turns away quickly and strides to the bedroom on the far left, his feet taking him out of habit to the room that was always his when the family visited.

Only when the door is firmly shut behind him is he able to truly breathe. He takes a few minutes to lean against the door, collecting himself, and then he opens his suitcase and mechanically starts dressing in his pajamas.

The old room hasn’t changed a bit since he was last here: everything done in shades of green—his favorite color—and white, and the bed with the dinosaur sheets, because the room needed new bedding when he was eleven and Frigga let him pick them out himself and he was hugely into dinosaurs that year. The bedside lamp that looks like the moon, its warm glow comfortingly familiar; he used to sleep with that lamp on all night when they visited the Utgard apartment, not because he was afraid of the dark but because he found the glow mesmerizing. The dresser with its deep bottom drawer, inside which a six-year-old Loki, on his first visit to the apartment, had scribbled “THIS IS LOKIS DONT TOUCH” in pencil. He opens the drawer carefully and runs a long, pale finger across the childish scrawl.

This was a mistake, coming here, and not only because the apartment is currently inhabited. This place has too many memories, things he’d rather forget, and he was wrong when he thought it wouldn’t bother him.

Still, he’s here, and he told Sif he’d stay the night to ease her worries. So he’ll sleep, and he’ll wake up early and leave without waking her, and he’ll find a hotel on the other side of Utgard and complete his business in Jotunheim quickly, and then he’ll vanish again.

Should be easy. He’s gotten very good at vanishing recently.

. . . . . .

_“Darling, what are you doing awake?” Frigga whispers. “Aren’t you tired after traveling all day to get here?”_

_Six-year-old Loki is exhausted, actually, but his fascination has overwhelmed his fatigue. “Look, Mum,” he whispers back, pointing a finger out the window._

_Frigga settles onto the carpet next to him and pulls him into her lap. “What are we looking at, dearest one?”_

_“Look at the lights,” he says, his gaze fixed on the Utgard skyline before him. “There’s so many lights.”_

_It’s an unfamiliar sight for him: their mansion in Asgard is in a fairly rural patch on the edge of the city, an idyllic setting that, despite being only a twenty-minute train ride from downtown Gladsheim where Odin’s office is, feels like the most pastoral of countrysides. Their vacation home in Nidavellir is a cabin at a ski resort, and their vacation home in Alfheim is a beach house on an exclusive stretch of unspoilt paradise, so Loki has never actually seen big city lights like this._

_And he is enchanted. He doesn’t know it yet, but this view is what will prompt him, two decades from now, to seek an apartment in the heart of downtown Hlidskjalf, rather than in one of the city’s trendy and peaceful bedroom communities._

_“It is very beautiful,” Frigga agrees, pulling her little boy closer and dropping a kiss on his dark hair, so unlike her own reddish hair and her husband’s light brown. “We don’t see lights like this back home, do we, sweetheart?” And then she hesitates, and her young son doesn’t notice the hitch in her voice when she asks, “Do you like Jotunheim, Loki?”_

_“Yeah, it’s cooler than our house,” he says promptly, oblivious to his mother’s discomfort, unaware that this conversation is the reason that Frigga will unconsciously avoid taking many trips to Jotunheim in the future, despite the fact that they’ve just purchased this beautiful apartment here. He’s unaware that there is some part of her that fears that she’ll lose Loki to this place, that he’ll learn the truth about his birth and think that this is where he belongs._

_All he knows is that his mum is holding him tight, and that he loves that—she gives the best hugs, which is good, because his daddy doesn’t give many hugs at all._

_And so he sits happily in his mother’s lap, staring in awe at the sparkling lights spreading out before him, while his mother kisses his hair and silently informs the city that Loki is hers now and it cannot have him back._

. . . . . .

Loki wakes very early and packs in the utmost silence, but still, when he steps out into the kitchen, suitcase in hand, Sif is already sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea.

She gives him a smile, amused and sad all at once. “Sneaking out?” she guesses.

That makes it sound worse than it is, so he pulls up a dignified sort of reserve around himself. “I have things I have to do today,” he says, which is true. “I’d always planned on only staying here one night,” he adds, which is not.

Sif rolls her eyes, sets down her tea, and walks to the window. “Come here,” she bids, and when he reluctantly does, she pulls back the curtain to show the faint early light illuminating a world buried in white. And snow is falling still. “Storm of the century,” she says. “Or at least it’d be the storm of the century in Asgard. In Jotunheim, they just call this ‘February.’ News says thirteen inches of snow has accumulated just in the last eight hours, and winds are causing massive drifts. They can’t even dig the snow plows out.” She lets the curtain fall closed. “So unless you brought your snowshoes, I think you’re stuck. I think we both are.”

Loki blinks. “You don’t have work?”

“They’d cancel it, if I did,” she shrugs. “But actually I finished my placement with the Giants last Friday. I just decided to stay here for another week before I went back to Asgard—have a little staycation. Maybe sightsee.” She gestures at the window with a rueful grin. “I picked a great week for it, apparently.”

Snowed in with Sif, just the two of them all alone, maybe for days: Loki’s high school fantasy is now his grown-up nightmare. “I’m going back to bed,” he says abruptly, and returns to his room.

He takes off his shoes and his coat, lays on his bed, and—thanks to the very early hour—quickly falls asleep.

When he wakes again two hours later, Sif is reading on the couch. “Oh, good,” she says when she sees him up, and his heart lifts, but then she says, “I’ve been wanting to work out, but I didn’t want to wake you up.”

“Wake me up?”

“Everything’s in the other room,” she explains, and leads him to the second spare bedroom, the one that was Thor’s. His bed with the Gladsheim Warriors quilt has been pushed into the corner, and there’s a treadmill and a set of free weights where it used to be. “I used the Giants’ facilities for serious workouts,” she explains, “but this was nice for my days off. You’re welcome to use any of it while we’re here.”

At this he glances at her. “So we’re definitely stuck here?”

She nods. “It snowed a couple more inches while you were asleep,” she confirms.

His shoulders sink. He should never have come here. Or he should have left last night while he still had a chance.

Sif doesn’t hang her head or bite her lip—not her style—but he can read her unhappiness in her eyes and her voice. “Is it that bad?” she demands. “Being stuck here with me? I mean, I know you’re not talking to your family, but . . . we’re still friends, aren’t we?”

Of course they are, except . . . they kind of aren’t. They’ve drifted apart since high school, though until last year they were still in each other’s orbits because her parents still live close to his and because she’s still best friends with Thor. And then he just hasn’t had contact with anyone for a long time. Part of him wants to ask if she knows the truth, if his family told her why he quit his job and sold his apartment and vanished, why he hasn’t responded to any of their emails or calls or texts in over a year. But the sensible side of him wins out, pointing out that if she doesn’t know, the last thing he wants to do is tell her that there’s something she should be curious about.

“It’s not you,” he assures her, which doesn’t really answer her question but it’s all he’s got. “I just have some work I need to get back to, and this is throwing a wrench in my plans.”

This is only partly true, but it convinces her—luckily for him, as he always used to have trouble lying convincingly to her—and she goes to work out and he goes into his old bedroom and pulls out his laptop and connects to the Wi-Fi with the login information Sif gave him. He does indeed have work-related things that need to get done; at the moment he’s unemployed by choice, wanting a break between contracts, but he’s got emails to answer and future employment to arrange.

So he sits at his old desk and types industriously away and tries not to think about Sif lifting weights next door. Sif, who was once his dearest friend (his only friend, truth be told); Sif, who he has always loved and probably always will; Sif, who he cut from his life when he cut everything from his life. It will do no one any good for him to dwell on any of that right now.

. . . . . .

_Through the haze of misery clouding his mind, Loki becomes aware of the sound of footsteps pounding toward him, and his heart sinks when he sneaks a peek over his shoulder and sees Sif jogging toward him. Why does it always have to be her? Why does she have such a knack for running into him when he’s at his lowest point and doesn’t want company?_

_It’s a problem because he loves spending time with Sif, but she has a very annoying knack of seeing through his mask and realizing when he’s more upset than he lets on._

_“Loki!” she says cheerfully, stopping beside his bench to stretch._

_“I didn’t know you ran in this area,” he says evenly._

_“Decided to try something new today. I didn’t know you hung out around here either.”_

_“Decided to try something new today,” he parrots._

_And there it is: as usual, Sif has seen through his mask, and her brow furrows. “You okay?”_

_“Fine,” he says nonchalantly._

_Sif looks at him a few moments, then drops unceremoniously onto the bench beside him. For a while they sit in silence, looking out over the rolling green fields, dotted with copses of trees, with only the faint sound of cars on a distant motorway to remind them that they’re still on the edge of Gladsheim._

_He knows he shouldn’t let down his guard, but Sif has that effect on him. So he is wearily undefended when she finally asks, “So if you’re fine, why have you been crying?”_

_“I haven’t been crying!” he snaps, and turns away from her._

_“You have,” she says reasonably, “and it’s fine.” And then she says, “The notion that men shouldn’t be allowed to cry or express their emotions is based on antiquated gender roles and does men harm by preventing them from reaching out for the emotional support they need,” because lately she’s gotten really into reading feminist blogs and reciting them verbatim._

_He scoffs._

_“I mean it,” she says, bumping his shoulder with hers. “You remember the day we met, you told me girls should be able to play whatever sports they want? If we can say ‘girls are bad at sports’ is a stupid, old-fashioned view on gender, isn’t that also true of ‘boys don’t cry’?”_

_She clearly means it with her whole heart, but Loki is fifteen years old, has never quite felt like he fits in at school, and desperately wants to please his rather old-fashioned father, so he is in no mood to defy antiquated gender roles or help Sif crush the patriarchy. “Your stupid blogs tell you that?” he asks snidely, because in recent years he has developed this charming habit where he lashes out at others when he feels vulnerable._

_Luckily Sif knows him too well to let the barb wound her too deeply. (Of course, even she has her limits when it comes to putting up with him, but they haven’t reached those limits . . . yet). “Sure did,” she says. “Now, are you going to tell me what’s wrong or what?”_

_He opens his mouth to insist that nothing’s wrong, and instead two fat tears spill down his cheeks. Sif, to her immense credit, says nothing, just scoots a little closer on the bench and casually takes his hand in hers. That’s her all over: absolutely unafraid of casual touch, of doing what needs to be done to help others, of rushing in where angels fear to tread. Loki’s chest is a maelstrom of feeling right now: half humiliation that she’s seeing him like this, half delight that she’s holding his hand, tangled together into a knot of pain that steals his breath away._

_“I made the golf team,” he blurts, because the alternative is to let go of her hand and walk away, and he doesn’t want to do that._

_Sif sits back so she can look at him properly, her expression delighted. “Loki, that’s amazing! I knew you’d been attending the after school club, but I didn’t know you were that good!”_

_He gives her a pained little smile, and she squeezes his hand gently. “So what about making the golf team has you looking like your dog died?”_

_Loki is silent for a long moment, staring out at the fields, feeling the breeze cool on his face and Sif’s hand warm in his. “I told my dad just now,” he says finally. “He said—” his voice catches as the pain washes over him anew— “‘Why don’t you play football, like Thor? That’s a man’s game. Golf is for people who can’t hack it at real sports and lazy CEOs trying to avoid work.’”_

_He hears Sif’s intake of breath, like she’s shocked at Odin’s callous response too, and that spurs him on. “I don’t even like golf that much!” he exclaims. “It’s just the only sport that I’m any good at, and you know how much my dad loves sports. I thought that—if I made one of the school teams, maybe he’d finally—”_

_He’s crying again, and at some point in all of this, Sif apparently started rubbing his arm with her free hand. “This is why patriarchy harms men too!” she says, which is true but doesn’t really help Loki feel any better, but then she adds, “That was a really sucky thing for your dad to say” in such a straightforward tone, like it’s just an undeniable fact that Odin was being sucky, that Loki instantly feels better._

_“Well, I’m proud of you, anyway,” she says after a moment. “What did the rest of your family say?”_

_“They were proud of me,” Loki admits, and his heart lifts at the memory of Frigga beaming delightedly at him, of Thor pulling him into a congratulatory hug._

_“Well, they’ve got some sense at least,” she says, and then, “I’m glad Thor was reasonable about it or I would’ve had to beat him up,” which ruins the moment a little because of course she was thinking of Thor in the middle of Loki’s crisis._

_Still, it’s delightful to sit here with Sif, with her holding his hand and telling him she’s proud of him, even if she only means it as a friend (even if she always only means it as a friend). And they sit together in silence and watch the long grass sway in the breeze._

. . . . . .

Loki manages to avoid Sif most of the day: he waits until she’s finished working out and is in the shower before he ducks into Thor’s old room and does twenty minutes on the treadmill, and then he slips into the shower without catching her notice. And then it’s back to his old room for more work. He supposes she might be expecting him to come out for lunch, but he stays hidden away; he’s used to missing lunch on occasion, when he’s too deep into a project at work to notice the time.

In the mid-afternoon, she knocks on his door to ask if he wants to watch a movie or something. He does his best politely apologetic smile and tells her he’s just got too much work to catch up on—an absolute lie, by the way—and shuts the door while a knot of feeling lodged somewhere in his throat screams at him that he’s being an absolute idiot. This is Sif Tyrsdottir, after all, wanting to hang out with him: Sif who has always been his best friend, even though he’s never been hers. Sif who was his first love, and who he never really stopped loving; he just got better at ignoring that feeling. Sif who is the yardstick by which he measures every woman he has ever dated. Sif who is still, after all these years and all the amazing places he’s visited around the globe, the most beautiful person, place or thing he’s ever seen.

But nothing is ever simple. Sif is his first and always love, but she’s never returned the sentiment. Sif was a dear friend once, but they drifted apart when they went off to university (before that, really—they’ve been drifting apart since that ill-fated high school dance, the second-worst day of his life). And worst of all, Sif is home; she is Asgard; she is everything that shattered on that day when he learned the truth, everything he swore to give up forever. How could he be with someone who is everything he wants to forget?

Not that she wants to be with him anyway.

So he hides himself away, and when he runs out of professional tasks he reads the financial news and some of his favorite blogs, and he’s almost convinced himself that he can avoid her forever when he hears her knock again.

“Come help me figure out dinner,” she orders him when he opens the door, and his stomach chooses that moment to growl loudly, so he can’t really pretend he’s not hungry. Come to think of it, he’s starving. So he follows her out into the kitchen.

“I don’t have a ton of food,” she confesses. “I eat out basically every meal. I did try to stock up a little when I heard the blizzard was coming, but I didn’t want to buy too much since I’m leaving for good on Friday.” She laughs a little. “If the snow doesn’t clear up soon, we’re going to be in trouble.”

“Well, I’ll be out of your hair as soon as they’ve plowed the roads enough for taxis to get through,” he says immediately, and Sif opens her mouth as if to say something, and then shuts it again and turns to the fridge.

So Loki helps her go through the kitchen and find enough bits and bobs to make a decent pasta meal. He’s not really much of a cook, but compared to Sif he’s practically a culinary genius.

They’re silent at first as they cook together, which is exactly what Loki wanted but that doesn’t change the fact that he hates it a little, until finally she asks, “Did you see that article about how pasta is killing us all?”

Loki did see that article, and he disagreed vehemently with that article. He tells Sif why, and she agrees, and that opens the floodgates: turns out he’s perfectly comfortable talking to Sif as long as the subject is current events or movies or stupid clickbait articles about pasta. It does mean that their conversation is about as shallow and vapid as two strangers on a blind date would have, but at least they’re talking.

So it’s a perfectly comfortable meal—so much so that when the dishes are all cleaned and set out to dry, and Sif hesitantly suggests a movie, Loki hesitantly agrees. The apartment has a subscription to an Asgardian-language movies-on-demand service, and they quickly find a new murder mystery movie they’ve both been wanting to see, and they settle in to watch it, Sif on one couch, Loki on the other.

It’s . . . nice. And for the first time since he arrived at the apartment, Loki relaxes.

. . . . . .

 _“I want to watch_ Hercules,” _says Thor petulantly._

_“Yeah, but you picked the last movie we watched,” Loki retorts._

_“So?” demands Thor. “Sif wants to watch_ Hercules _too.”_

 _Loki grimaces at that; he doesn’t want to watch_ Hercules, _he wants to watch_ Aladdin, _but if both Sif and Thor gang up on him . . . besides, he doesn’t want to make Sif mad._

_But Sif says, “No, it’s Loki’s turn.”_

_In later years, Loki will come to realize that Sif just has a highly developed sense of right and wrong and fairness, but now, at eleven, he likes to believe that she comes to his defense because she likes him best. (High school will disabuse him of that notion, when she and Thor join the wrestling team together and play football in the park on Saturdays, and Loki will no longer be able to deny what anyone watching the three of them could have told him ages ago: that Sif and Thor are best friends, and Loki is . . . also around.)_

_But in that moment they hear Frigga’s voice calling to Sif, telling her that her mother needs her home now. So they don’t watch a movie after all; the Odinson brothers walk her out to the tree that marks halfway between her house and theirs, and she waves goodbye and runs off, and Loki watches her go with a wistful smile._

_Unfortunately for him, Thor notices. “Why are you smiling like that?” he asks in a teasing tone._

_Loki wipes the grin from his face. “I’m not smiling,” he says, because he’s not nearly as smooth a liar as he will be later in life._

_“You were! You were smiling at Sif! Do you want her to be your girlfriend?”_

_That last word is said with just such a mocking tone that Loki stiffens. The truth is, if he were brave enough, he would ask Sif to be his girlfriend. He’s seen his classmates pair off often enough over the years, calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend and sitting together at lunch and holding hands on the playground. Loki has never done this himself, but he does like the idea, and if it were going to be any girl it would be Sif. But the way Thor says it, it’s clear that it’s a joke—that he’s going to tease Loki if Loki says yes. And Loki hates being teased, and he especially hates being teased by Thor, because everyone thinks that Thor is perfect and Loki is tired of feeling imperfect._

_It doesn’t make any sense, because Thor’s had loads of girlfriends, so why should Loki be teased if he decides he wants to do the same? But Loki is, at eleven, learning how the world works, and one of the things he’s learned is that there is a different set of rules for the people who are charming and attractive and popular than for the people who are quiet and plain and overlooked._

_So he says “No” just as icily as he can, and he must manage to sound quite convincing, because Thor looks surprised._

_“You don’t like Sif?”_

_“Not like that,” he says, injecting disgust into his voice._

_And it’s convincing, and Thor drops it, neither of them guessing then that this will become a pattern in Loki’s life: him vehemently denying that he feels anything at all for Sif Tyrsdottir._

. . . . . .

“You know,” says a voice behind him, and Loki jumps about two feet in the air, “this is twice in a row I’ve found you at this window in the middle of the night.”

He turns to give Sif a rueful smile, though, illuminated as they are only by the lights outside, he doubts she’ll be able to see it. “You’re very stealthy, did you know that?”

“Missed my calling,” she says. “Should’ve been a spy.” She hesitates a few moments before seating herself carefully on the carpet next to him, and his heart hurts a little; fifteen years ago—fifteen months ago, even—she would have sat by him immediately, without question, without thought, but now she hesitates, and he knows that’s his fault.

So when she says “What do you keep looking at out here?” he forces himself to answer honestly.

“I love this view,” he says. “When we used to come here when I was a kid, I’d sneak out of my bed and sit here and look at the lights.”

“Really? What did you like so much?”

He shrugs. “It was just so different from home. And I’ve always been a night owl, which our little village didn’t really accommodate; it’s pitch black there once the sun goes down. So the idea of a whole city, all lit up at night, felt like . . . possibility. Like I could go out there and do something exciting at any hour of the night.”

“You were thinking all of this as a kid?”

“Well, some of it was more as a teenager.” He hesitates, but it’s been so nice to talk to her without reserve that he gives himself permission to continue. “We actually only stayed here maybe four times. So it’s not like I did this a ton.”

“You guys own an apartment that you only visited four times in twenty years?” Sif asks in disbelief, then shakes her head. “Rich people.”

Loki snorts at that. “Pot, meet kettle.”

“We were rich, but we weren’t Odinson rich. And now I’m just a physiotherapist. So I’m not rich, I’m just well-off.”

“An important distinction,” he says drily. They fall into silence then, and he supposes this would be a good moment to end the conversation and go to bed. But he’s hardly had any time to enjoy the view, to sit in silence and contemplate the carpet of lights spreading out before him, much more visible now that the snow has finally started to let up.

Besides, here in the dark, he can pretend like the last year or ten years never happened; he can simply allow himself to enjoy talking to Sif, who doesn’t know it but who is the closest friend he has ever had.

“It’s a beautiful view,” comes Sif’s voice from beside him, and he turns to look at her. She’s little more than a faint profile in the darkness, the delicate angles of her face softly picked out in wisps of light.

“I think this view is the reason I got an apartment in downtown Hlidskjalf,” he is surprised to hear himself volunteer.

She turns to look at him.

“A lot of people who work in the financial district live in the suburbs, by the lake. There’s an express train that gets you from one to the other in fifteen minutes. They never understood why I’d stay in the crowded, noisy city instead. But—” he gestures at the city skyline laying out before them— “endless possibility. At any hour of the night.”

“And did you?” she asks, gently teasing. “Go out and do something exciting at any hour of the night?”

He considers. “Almost never.”

She laughs softly at that, while he tries not to feel too pleased with himself. “Did you like Hlidskjalf?” she asks after a moment.

“I did,” he says. “Lots going on. Great restaurants. Great museums and shows. I loved not having to own a car.”

An empty apartment. A sea of strangers’ faces. Long nights when he thought of his hometown on the other side of the country more than he’d ever admit aloud. These are the things he’s not going to tell Sif about his life in Hlidskjalf.

“And doing . . . fancy hedge fund things,” Sif adds.

“All the fancy hedge fund things,” Loki agrees.

She’s quiet a moment. “Do you think you’ll go back?”

Trust her to ask questions he doesn’t know how to answer. “No plans at present. But what about you? Tell me about working for the Warriors.”

Sif shakes her head with a smile, but she lets him change the subject. She gives him a brief overview of being a team physiotherapist for the Gladsheim Warriors, a mid-tier football team who’ve never won a title but nonetheless turn all of Gladsheim into football hooligans on game days. Then she tells him about working for the Utgard Giants, and then she admits, “I’m going to miss Utgard. It’s actually a pretty cool place.”

“Yeah, it is,” he says quietly, his eyes fixed out on the horizon, as though if he looks hard enough, he can locate the spot out there where he was born.

“But I am excited to go home,” she adds. “It’ll be warmer there, at least.” She hesitates. “Speaking of, I’ll be gone on Friday. I don’t know what your plans are, but if you’re going to stay in Utgard, you should stay here. Don’t go get a hotel, I mean; that’d be silly, when this apartment will be open.” Another pause. “And until then . . . it’s been nice spending time with you. It’s been a nice day.”

“Has it?” he asks wryly.

“Okay, so you spent most of the day locked in your room. But tonight, with dinner and the movie and now—that’s been fun.” She hesitates, then reaches out and sets a hand lightly on his knee. “And if you’re going to vanish into the mists again, I’ve got to spend time with you while I can.”

She talks as though not getting to spend time with him is a tragedy. And her hand on his knee is warm and welcome. How could he say no?

“Fine,” he says. “I’ll stay.”

She squeezes his knee gently as the dim lights outside illuminate her smile.

. . . . . .

_It’s absolute chance that he even comes across the picture. Normally he never reads the sports section of the newspaper; normally he reads the front section and the finance section and throws the rest away. But he has a long train ride today, to get to a stupid team building at some facility up in the warehouse district, and he doesn’t want to waste his phone battery when he has a feeling he’ll need it to distract himself while his co-workers are trying to build a tower out of office furniture._

_So he leafs through the whole newspaper on the train, reading any articles with headlines that look interesting—such as the one at the top of the sports section: “Gladsheim Warriors celebrate quarterfinals win.”_

_He doesn’t care much about the Warriors, not even after living from birth to eighteen in Gladsheim, because he doesn’t care much about football. But Sif had mentioned to him, when they were both staying at their parents’ homes last Christmas, that she was about to start a job with the Warriors. And for that reason alone, he looks closer at the article._

_It’s silly, really, because the article is hardly going to mention the team’s newest physiotherapist. But against all odds, his perusal is rewarded, because there’s a massive color photo accompanying the article: the team celebrating out on the pitch, a jumble of limbs and grinning faces and red uniforms. Around the edges of the photo, coaches and staff celebrate as well. And on the far left, in three quarters profile, a massive grin on her face, is Sif._

_Loki’s breath catches in his throat. She was cute as a child and pretty as a teenager, but as an adult, she is stunning. It is the dumbest, most sentimental thing, but he can’t stop himself from reaching out and gently touching the picture of her face. A wave of longing crashes over him, and he has to close his eyes for a moment._

_He and Sif used to text and email sometimes when they were both at university, and though he won’t quite admit to having been lonely in Vanaheim, he has to admit that getting those emails was always the high point of his month. But that petered out over the years, and now he only sees her when he goes back to Gladsheim, which he takes care to ensure only happens once or twice a year: the promise of seeing Sif and his mother is not worth being in the same house as his father and watching the man fawn over Thor, his favorite new company director and the heir to his massive business empire, any more often than that. Especially when Sif only sees him as an old school chum, and not a particularly close one at that. So that means he hasn’t spoken to Sif in eight months._

_But he still has her number saved in his phone. He could text her._

_He could snap a picture of the newspaper and send it with the caption “You’re famous!” and maybe she’d respond. Maybe they could chat a little over text. It could be nice; it’s been a while since he chatted with a friend. And the thought is so enticing that he pulls out his phone and opens the messenger app almost without meaning to. He puts her name in the To: bar. He snaps the photo of the newspaper. His thumb hovers over the keyboard._

_And then he stops. He’s not even sure this is her number anymore. Plus, unlike him, Sif has friends—piles of friends—and this is a national newspaper; she’s probably getting texts about this picture from all over Asgard. She’d probably see his silly message and wonder why he felt the need to be the hundredth person to tell her about it._

_Most importantly, if she has any interest in talking to him—if she misses him the way he misses her—she’s perfectly capable of reaching out to him; his cell number hasn’t changed since high school. The fact that she hasn’t has to mean something._

_So he deletes the text draft and turns off his phone._

_And when the train arrives at his station, he unceremoniously dumps the whole newspaper in a recycling bin, and he walks off to his stupid team building, and the hollow where his heart should be feels just a little emptier than usual._

_. . . . . ._

In the morning, the snow has slowed to light flurries, and the city website informs them that they’ve finally been able to get the snow plows out and should be making their way through Utgard today. It’s just in time, too, because the food left in the apartment will barely be enough to get them through lunch. Sif apologizes profusely through a breakfast of instant oatmeal and toast made from the ends of a freezer-burned bread loaf.

(She is carefully not saying that what she bought was plenty for a single person to ride out the storm and she wasn’t expecting company, but Loki hears it anyway, and feels guilty. But she’s the one who’s practically begged him, more than once, to stay, so he’s trying very hard to stop feeling guilty.)

As they’re cleaning up, her parents FaceTime her. “Probably heard about the storm and want to ask how I’m doing,” she says. “I’ll take it in my room.”

He lifts a hand, a half-formed objection on his lips, and she gives him a reassuring smile. “I won’t tell my parents you’re here either,” she promises. “I won’t tell anyone, Loki. I swear.”

With Sif tucked away in her room for what will probably be a long call, Loki decides this a good moment to do some yoga; he hasn’t had time for it in over a week, and his lower back is feeling it. He gave his mat away to a colleague when he left Midgard—no sense lugging something so bulky around when they’re affordable and fairly easy to find—but a towel spread out on the living room carpet will be good enough for now.

So he changes clothing and pulls up his favorite yoga app on his phone, and he’s sitting there on his towel just getting into his ujjayi breathing when Sif’s door opens.

“Oh, are you doing yoga?” she asks, sounding delighted. “Can I join you?” 

Loki is startled out of his careful breathing. “Is your call already done?”

“Yeah, just a quick check-in,” she says. “So, can I? I’ve always wanted to try yoga.”

He can hardly say no, having set up in the middle of the living room. So he nods and gets her a towel while she changes clothes, and soon they are side by side, focused on the video on his phone.

It is perhaps not the most meditative yoga practice he’s ever had, given that his attention is constantly pulled to the woman beside him. Sif is surprisingly good for a newbie; she doesn’t know any of the postures or movements, but she’s strong and flexible and she catches on quick.

(And he absolutely does not take any satisfaction from the fact that the only thing she really struggles with, balance postures, is something he happens to be excellent at, and that she shoots him admiring looks when his balance postures are flawless. Because he’s doing this for his physical and mental wellness, not to show off for a cute girl.) (Although maybe he can consider showing off for a cute girl to be a nice side benefit.)

Finally they reach the end of the practice, and, happily spent, Loki lays back into savasana, closing his eyes and relaxing his body, one muscle group at a time. His mind wanders. He thinks of Coulson, his therapist back in Hlidskjalf, who first recommended yoga to him as a way to deal with stress and learn to practice mindfulness. And that makes him think of Darcy, his old personal assistant. She was the one who first put the idea of getting a therapist in his head, by casually bringing up her own therapist in conversations; it was only months later that he realized that she did it on purpose, sensing that he needed to talk to someone and trying to show him by her casual discussion of it that being in therapy isn’t something to be ashamed of.

Therapy was good for Loki; he still regrets, a little, that leaving Hlidskjalf meant ending his sessions with Coulson. They were able to work on some of Loki’s issues, like his exhausting mix of towering arrogance and crippling self-doubt, and his tendency to lash out when he feels vulnerable, and some of the scars left from his childhood. (Not all the scars, obviously; he was only in therapy for two years, after all.) Coulson was great, even if he did have far too many cutesy little sayings, like “Every day is a new day” and “No change, no growth” and “Hurt people hurt people.”

Loki’s eyes open.

Hurt people hurt people. He can hear Coulson’s voice in his head, clear as day, as he stares up at the ceiling, and he can imagine what the man would say if he could see him now. Sif has been nothing but kind and helpful to him since he wandered uninvited into her apartment in the middle of the night; she gave him a place to stay and fed him from her own dwindling food supplies. And Sif had nothing to do with this latest estrangement from his family. And still, because he’s been hurt by his parents, he has done nothing but hurt her lately: he cut off all contact with her when he left Asgard, and he’s been avoiding her where possible here in the apartment, and when he’s had to talk to her he’s been brief and impersonal, to the point that she’s doubted whether they’re friends anymore.

His head tips to the side. “I’m sorry, Sif.”

Sif, lying a few feet away, still in savasana, opens her eyes and turns her head to look at him. “For what?”

“I’ve been a jerk,” he says. “You’ve always been my friend. You gave me a place to stay in a blizzard. And I responded by being a jerk.”

Sif curls up on her side, her head resting on her arm, so she’s facing him. “A bit,” she says, eyes twinkling. She pauses for a moment, her gaze going vague as though she’s looking for words. And then she focuses on him again. “I don’t know what caused this big rift between you and your family,” she says. “I never asked and they never volunteered that information. But I’ve known your family for a long time, which unfortunately means that I am 100% ready to believe that your dad is capable of doing something that would make you want to cut off contact with him.” Her gaze softens. “But Loki, you’ve still got people who love you in Asgard. And it makes me sad that you decided that cutting off contact with your dad meant cutting off contact with Thor and your mum . . . and with me.”

She’s wrong that this rift is only between him and his father, but he’s not ready for that conversation right now. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly.

She presses her lips together tightly a moment, then asks, “Why didn’t you answer my email?”

He blinks. “Did you email me? Recently?”

“Six, seven months ago. You weren’t answering your family, and I thought maybe . . .”

“The account I used at university?” he guesses.

She nods again, and he admits, “I haven’t checked that for ages. It was all . . . messages from my family.”

She sighs, even as she gives him a sad little smile. “Would you have answered me? If you’d seen it?”

He’s quiet a long few moments. “Maybe,” he says finally.

This time she’s the one pausing. “Okay,” she says after a few moments, “so can we be friends again, then? Can you stop avoiding me? Here and in the future?”

Surprise courses through him at her easy forgiveness. “I can do that,” he agrees.

She smiles warmly and reaches out with the hand currently not pillowed under her head to grab his hand where it lays loosely by his side. The touch is comforting and electrifying all at once. “Good,” she says softly. The movement has required her to roll onto her stomach, her head still laying on her arm, and laying side by side like this feels suddenly rather intimate, and he hopes she can’t feel his pulse accelerating in his hand.

“So,” she says after a moment, “is this usually how you end a session of yoga? Heartfelt confessions on the floor?”

Loki laughs aloud, the first time he can remember doing so in weeks, maybe months. And then he gathers his courage and squeezes her hand. “No, you just got lucky.”

. . . . . .

_“You just about ready?”_

_Loki looks up from his bags to see his mother standing in his doorway, giving him a smile that is fond and sad and resigned and proud all at once._

_“We need to leave for the airport in thirty minutes,” she adds, and Loki feels a lump in his throat, even as a thrill runs through his veins. The University of Njörðr is all he’s ever wanted: it’s one of the best and oldest universities in the world. Equally importantly, it’s in Vanaheim: it’s two hours away by air and it’s technically another country (although the union between Asgard and Vanaheim means citizens from each can travel easily to the other, and although they share both a spoken language and a culture so it won’t be overly different from living in Asgard)._

_All he’s ever wanted is to get away from Gladsheim and away from Odin, his father who’s never understood him or made time for him, who’s never been proud of a single thing he did, who’s always liked Thor best of his sons. Odin always claims otherwise, of course—can’t have people thinking he’s less than a perfect father!—but Loki’s the one who’s had to live on the receiving end of his coldness. In Vanaheim, he won’t have to live with his father’s perpetual disappointment. He won’t constantly be compared to Thor, who’s staying in Gladsheim for university. He can become his own person away from them both, for the first time in his life._

_But still, leaving behind everything he knows is not easy. He’ll be sorry to be so far away from his mother. He’ll even miss Thor a little; he might resent that Thor is the golden child who’s always gotten the lion’s share of love—from their father and from the world at large—but he also knows that Thor doesn’t do any of it on purpose, and that he loves his little brother very sincerely._

_And he’ll miss Sif, though he very much doubts that she’ll miss him, or that she’s even thought of him while his family’s been off traveling all summer._

_As though reading his thoughts, Frigga tilts her head a little. “Did you say goodbye to Sif?”_

_He shakes his head. “I’ve been busy,” he says, which is technically true._

_His mother casts a critical eye over the suitcases on his floor. “Well, it looks to me like you’re ready to go, and we still have a half-hour. Maybe you should run over and talk to her.”_

_Loki shrugs nonchalantly, but Frigga is not fooled. “I know something happened between the two of you, and it breaks my heart,” she says quietly. “You two have been the dearest of friends for the last eight years, and it saddens me to see this distance between you. But you’re leaving the country, Loki. Could you really bear to go so far away without even saying goodbye?”_

_Her words press against his chest until he can barely breathe. He has thought long and hard about whether to say goodbye to Sif, and come to no satisfactory conclusion: the thought of going away without seeing her one last time is unbearable, but so is the thought of speaking with her face to face. He’d ultimately decided not to say goodbye, simply because it’s easier, but his mother’s words are enough to tip the scales in favor of seeing Sif one last time._

_“Maybe I’ll go see if she’s home,” he says casually, which is silly, because his carefully cultivated facade of casual disinterest fools most people but it’s never fooled his mother._

_She just smiles, and Loki walks past her and out the door, his heart pounding with both anticipation and dread. He supposes he’ll go as far as the tree that marks the halfway point between his house and hers, and decide how he feels._

_But the decision is taken out of his hands, because when he turns the corner and her house comes into view, she’s walking toward him. She hurries her stride a little, and they meet under the halfway tree._

_She breaks the tense silence first. “I was worried I might have missed you. Thor told me your flight was today but he wasn’t sure when you were leaving for the airport.”_

_“Pretty soon,” he says tightly, glancing down at his watch just to have something to do._

_“It’s crazy,” she says, shifting uncomfortably, because she’s never been very good at hiding her feelings, and there is enough tension here that it’s probably making the tree next to them uncomfortable. “You going to university in another country.”_

_He nods. “When do you leave for GU?”_

_“I can start moving into the dorms next Monday.” Both she and Thor elected to live in the dorms at Gladsheim University, despite their parents living only a twenty-minute drive away, because they both want to have the full university experience._

_“Sounds like fun,” says Loki, because it’s his turn to say something and that’s the best he can come up with right now._

_“I hope you like Vanaheim,” she says, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. She usually never wears it down in the summer, preferring to keep it in a ponytail and out of her face (much to the despair of her mother, who insists that men prefer women with hair in long, soft waves). He wonders why she wore her hair down today in the late August heat._

_“I’d say ‘I hope you like Gladsheim’ but I guess you already know whether you do,” he says._

_She flashes him a quick smile, and his heart breaks a little more. She is so beautiful and so wonderful, and he suddenly wants to demand “Why couldn’t you have loved me the way I love you?” but he’d prefer not to die of embarrassment today, thank you very much._

_“It’s too bad you guys were traveling all summer,” she says. “I’ve barely seen you at all since graduation.”_

_They’ve barely seen each other since before graduation, truth be told, but he’s glad she didn’t bring that up. The humiliation and pain of the night of the Sweethearts Dance is still fresh and raw and in his heart, even five months later, and he doesn’t think he has the fortitude to discuss it with her right now._

_“Well, I’ll come home for Christmas,” he says._

_“Good,” she smiles. “Me too.” Then she hesitates. “And until then . . . let’s stay in touch?” She shrugs helplessly. “Let’s . . . stay friends.”_

_Loki stares at her in wonder. She avoided him for weeks after the Sweethearts Dance, and he’d rather suspected he’d damaged their friendship irreparably. But if she can say she still wants to stay friends . . . “Yeah, let’s stay friends,” he agrees. It's only the fact that he's spent the last five months practicing resignation and poise and composure that enables him to say that as casually as he does. From Sif’s face, it appears that he was convincing._

_“We can text,” she says._

_“Definitely. But I’d better go; we need to get to the airport.” Again he is proud of his composure._

_“Yeah, you’d better. But, umm, should we—” She steps forward, arms awkwardly lifting, which is weird because she’s never been afraid of touching him before._

_And he curses, not for the first time, the fact that she ever asked him to that stupid dance._

_“Yeah,” he says, and steps forward for what he intends to be a quick hug._

_But once Sif has her arms around him, it’s hard to let go. And she doesn’t move either._

_It’s dangerous to let himself enjoy this too much. He can’t go down this road again, can’t feel so much for her, if he wants to keep his sanity._

_“Goodbye, Sif,” he says, and walks away without looking back._

. . . . . .

After their heartfelt yoga confessions, the mood in the apartment lifts considerably, and the weak sunlight filtering through the clouds helps. Loki finds a few board games in his old room, and they while away the morning playing them; Sif is absurdly competitive and serious about winning, and Loki finds himself laughing more than he has in ages.

For lunch they eat the very last remnants of food in the house, and Sif sends more than a few worried looks out the window. “The snow plows better get here soon,” she says, “or at least they’d better clear the sidewalks, or we might starve to death in here.”

Loki agrees wholeheartedly, but there’s also a part of him that will be sorry when the roads are cleared. Now that he and Sif are on good terms again, being trapped with her has been just as delightful as his younger self had always thought it would be.

Well, his younger self would have hoped for more making out.

So would his present day self, truth be told, but beggars can’t be choosers. 

“I’m glad to hear it, but I’m also not looking forward to going out in the cold.”

Sif snorts. “If you didn’t want cold, you shouldn't have come to Jotunheim in February,” she says. “This storm is only average, by Jotun standards.” She gives him an amused grin. “I take it your family never visited in the winter before?”

“Only in the summer,” he confirms. He’d always known, on an intellectual level, that Jotunheim was a cold place that snowed a lot, but he’d never quite understood what that would actually be like to experience.

“Well,” she shrugs, “welcome to a Jotun winter.” 

Her words unsettle him a little. He’d thought, when he decided to come here, that he’d step onto the streets of Utgard and it would be like coming home, that he’d see where he came from and finally understand who he is. He’d even had a vague idea of settling down here for a while, of getting back to his roots and finding himself in Jotunheim. But he hates snow and ice, unless he’s skiing, and even skiing he only tolerates when he’s in the right mood. If this is Jotunheim . . . maybe he doesn’t belong here.

After lunch he pulls out his laptop because Sif mentioned a funny video earlier and now she wants to show it to him. This turns into a whole marathon of funny or exciting videos, almost all suggested by Sif, because Loki doesn’t really watch a whole lot of funny videos online. But he doesn’t mind it at all, because watching his laptop together means she has to sit right up next to him, her leg pressed against his, her head practically leaning against his shoulder so she can see. He would watch a thousand hockey fight videos if it meant having Sif so close.

Disappointment courses through him when his low battery warning comes on and Sif unpeels herself from his side, but she doesn’t leave; she leans back against the other arm of the couch and tucks her toes beneath his thigh—for warmth, she says—and asks what he does for fun these days.

The answer is awfully short—reading financial news, and does yoga count?—but that leads into a conversation about hobbies, which leads into a conversation about the many sports she plays, which leads into reminiscing about the happier moments of their shared childhood.

It’s very relaxing (even if having her toes beneath his leg is not at all relaxing, and how pathetic is it that even that innocent contact makes his heart race?), and he’s in an excellent mood by the time she asks gently “So what have you been up to for the last year? You know, since you left Hlidskjalf.”

So he decides to answer honestly. He’s already promised himself to stop pushing her away, and besides, what can it hurt if Sif knows where he’s been? She’s already promised she won’t tell his family that she’s seen him, and even if she did tell them, they couldn’t use it to figure out where he’ll go next.

“I went to Svartalfheim,” he says. “Old classmate from college is from there, and invited me to come consult with his firm for a while. They’re still rebuilding from the war in the 80s, if you can believe it. It was an exciting new challenge.”

“And you’ve been there the whole time?”

He shakes his head. “Midgard too. Same thing—consulting. Just a six month contract.”

“So . . . what’s the plan after? Do you have a job lined up here in Utgard?”

He gives her an eloquent look, and searches desperately for a tone that is a good balance between gently teasing and serious as he says “Very nosy.” Thor would know how to do it, to tell someone to stop prying without angering them, but he’s never had Thor’s gift with people.

“Hey, I already promised I’m not going to tell your family I’ve seen you. I’m just curious.” She hesitates, then admits quietly, “I’ve been worried about you. It’s good to hear that you’ve been, you know, safe and employed.”

Her confession takes the wind out of his sails. “I haven’t decided yet,” he admits. “Where I’m going next.”

“Well, I hope you find what it is you’re looking for,” she says quietly.

Loki’s gaze turns inward for a moment, as Sif’s words strike a chord with him. He hopes that too, but he supposes he’d have to _know_ what he’s looking for, in order for that to work. “Thank you,” he says quietly.

“You think you’ll ever work for your dad’s company?”

His lips tighten into a thin line. “No,” he says shortly.

“Hey,” she says gently, sitting up so she can lay a placating hand on his arm. “I know that’s complicated. It’s just that you used to always want that, when you were a kid.”

He did, so her question was reasonable, and he forces himself to release his irritation.

“You’re right,” he says simply. “It’s complicated. But no, I don’t want to work for my father. Not ever.”

. . . . . .

_“I can’t believe you go back to school so soon!” Thor whines. “This has been the shortest Christmas break ever. You should just stay here. Transfer to GU.”_

_“I only have a semester left,” Loki snorts. “I don’t think they’d be super happy about me transferring just for that.” But beneath his teasing words, he’s pleased and flattered. He usually doesn’t really feel like he’s necessary to anyone’s happiness, except maybe his mother’s, and these moments where Thor seems to really want his company are always surprising and gratifying. “But hey, then I’ll be done with grad school.”_

_“And I’ll be done with my MBA! And then you’re coming back to Gladsheim, right? You’re gonna come work for Dad too, right?”_

_Loki hesitates. That’s always been his plan, always been his father’s expectation, and mostly he’s excited about the idea. Vanaheim served its purpose: he’s had six years on his own (a full quarter of his life), and he’s learned and grown so much. He’s lived his own life out of his father and brother’s shadows. So, with that life goal out of the way, why not return to Gladsheim and work for his dad? After all, what’s the point of having a mega-wealthy business tycoon for a father if you’re not going to benefit from a little nepotism?_

_Besides, it’d be nice to be near his mother, nice to be near Thor, nice to be near Sif. He’s missed his old friend since he went to Vanaheim; they catch up at Christmas, but they generally only manage to overlap each other for a week or two over the summers: one of them is always on vacation with their family or taking summer classes or doing an internship that prevents them from coming home. And he misses her. Things never went entirely back to normal after that Sweethearts Dance, but they’re slowly getting better each time he sees her. And she told him just a few days ago at her parents’ Christmas party that she’s still got a year and a half left in her physiotherapy program, which she’s doing here in Gladsheim. So she’d be around, if he moved back here. Not that he expects anything to happen there—she was never interested when they saw each other every single day, why would she be interested now?—but at least they could rekindle their friendship. That would be enough to make him happy, he tells himself, and mostly means it._

_The only thing that’s holding him back from immediately answering Thor’s question in the affirmative is the job offer he received a few months ago. He interned the last two summers at one of the biggest brokerage firms in Hlidskjalf, and he must have really impressed them because not long after he was finished, he got a letter from his supervisor, informing him that he has a job with them after graduation if he wants it. That would be huge, getting such an amazing position right out of grad school. And he loved it there. He suspects he’d love it there more than he’d love working for his dad._

_But he’s being silly. Odin has always expected to have his two sons come work for him right out of school: the men of the family, together again, conquering the business world as a trio. “Of course I’m coming back,” he answers Thor._

_“Then we’ll be co-workers!” Thor beams. “Have you talked to Dad yet about what he has planned for you?” He leans forward conspiratorially. “It’s not official yet, so don’t tell, but Dad’s going to make me the director of strategy.”_

_Loki’s eyes widen. Straight to director level? Well, then he’s definitely going to work for his dad, if that’s what he can expect. “Nepotism sure has its advantages,” he laughs._

_He isn’t laughing a half-hour later, when he’s standing in his father’s study with eyes wide. “Financial analyst?” he repeats incredulously._

_“Assistant manager of Financial Planning and Analysis,” Odin corrects. “I think this will be an excellent position for you. It should be in your wheelhouse, with your degree, plus you’ll get management experience right off. The department head will be retiring in two years, and you’ll be ready to take his place.” He hesitates. “You don’t seem happy.”_

_Once upon a time he would have blown up at his father, but he’s grown up enough to realize that outbursts neither move his father nor prove his point that he’s mature enough to handle more. “I’m just surprised,” he says. “Thor said you’re making him director of strategy.”_

_“Ah,” says Odin, and although his expression is as implacable as always, Loki detects a hint of hesitation in his tone: he hadn’t expected Loki to know that. “Well, yes, with his MBA, I thought that was a good spot for him.”_

_“Yes, but we’ll both be entry level, right out of school,” Loki points out. “And still, you’re making me an assistant manager and him a director? That’s three or four levels above me.”_

_“Well, Thor interned for me these last two summers.”_

_“And I interned at the most prestigious brokerage firm in Hlidskjalf! Maybe in the country!” Loki objects, feeling himself start to lose his cool._

_“There wasn’t a director position available for you.”_

_“There wasn’t one available for Thor either!” Loki bursts out. “I’m very familiar with your company, Dad; you think I don’t know that you’ve never had a director of strategy before? You invented the position for him!”_

_Odin simply looks at him. “And if I did?”_

_“I am top of my class at one of the top finance programs in the world!” Loki snaps. “Thor is a solid B- student who wouldn’t have gotten a decent internship if he weren’t your son. Why is he getting such a better position than me?”_

_“Because he is my heir!” Odin snaps, finally losing his self-control. “You are not. It is as simple as that, Loki. I need him to get experience at the executive level, and I think your talents will be better put to use in the position I’m offering you.”_

_“So what you’re saying is that this has nothing to do with merit, or intelligence, or me making myself sick studying all night while Thor parties with his friends.” Loki tries to keep his composure, he really does, but by the time he gets to the end, he is all but shouting. “No matter what I do to prove myself to you, it will never be enough, because Thor was born thirteen months before me.”_

_“That is_ not _what I’m saying—” Odin begins, and somehow his voice snaps Loki back into composure._

 _“Thank you for making this decision so easy for me,_ Dad,” _and Loki has never, not even at his most drunk or his most angry, put so much sarcasm on that title before. “You can keep your job.”_

_There’s a small victory in the fact that he’s never seen his father so surprised. “What?”_

_“I’ve been offered a position in Hlidskjalf, at the brokerage firm I interned at. And I got that position on merit alone. Apparently they don’t agree with you that my worth is directly related to my birth order.”_

_And he walks from the room with all the dignity he can muster._

_In the morning, Loki wakes before his family and takes a taxi to the airport; he doesn’t think he can deal with talking to any of them right now. Odin calls him while he’s waiting at his gate and offers to find him a higher position in the company._

_Loki hangs up on him._

. . . . . .

Some time after four o’clock, they hear a rumbling sound outside, and Sif runs to the window. “It’s the snow plows!” she exclaims. “And they’re clearing the sidewalks too. We’re not going to starve tonight!” She turns to grin at him. “I was starting to get worried. My flight home’s in less than 48 hours.”

“At least you know they’ll prioritize clearing snow around the airport.”

She nods, then glances down at herself. “I should shower if we’re going to head out for food later.”

While she showers, Loki checks his email. He’s found a consulting opportunity in Alfheim that sounds nice—and very warm—but he doesn’t respond just yet; he still doesn’t know how long he’ll be in Jotunheim.

He takes a shower as well, and when he’s just finished getting dressed, Sif knocks on his door.

“Mimir’s is open,” she declares, phone in hand, when he answers. “It’s the best Jotun food around. And it’s only three blocks away. Hurry and finish getting dressed. And bundle up; it’s still cold out.”

Loki is not excited at the prospect of going out into the cold, but he is quite hungry from two very light meals today. So he obligingly puts on his warmest clothes and his coat and his nice boots—they’re supposed to be water-resistant, and for what he paid for them, they’d darn well better be—and heads out into the kitchen.

Sif is dressed like she’s headed out for an arctic expedition, and she laughs when she sees him. “That’s the only coat you brought? You really weren’t prepared for a Jotun winter. Hold on a sec.”

She disappears into her room and comes out with a scarf, a hat, and a pair of gloves. The gloves are too small—his hands are enormous compared to hers—but everything else is very much appreciated. 

They head downstairs and Sif leads them confidently out into the icy dusk. Three blocks later, they step into a little restaurant, narrow but deep, and delightfully warm and cozy after the freezing weather outside. The place is nearly full. Besides the airport, it’s the first time since arriving that he’s seen so many Jotuns in one place, and he is struck by the familiarity of some of their features: black hair, pale skin, angular features. He thinks of his tan, fair-haired family and neighbors back in Gladsheim and wonders how he never suspected he wasn’t Asgardian. (Although then he glances at Sif and thinks, maybe her dark hair is the reason he never thought his own dark hair was unusual.)

A waitress who seems to know Sif shows her to a table near the kitchen—extra warm, for which Loki is eternally grateful. Loki lets Sif order for him, trusting her to know what’s best, and soon they have a full spread before them: steamed potato dumplings, leek soup, stuffed peppers, and sausages with bread. Sif digs right in, but Loki hesitates before his first bite.

This is his first real brush with Jotunheim on this visit; watching Asgardian-language movies and playing Asgardian board games with Sif certainly doesn’t count. So this means that this is his first significant contact with Jotun culture since learning the truth about his birth, and it feels significant. So he pauses a moment before he eats.

But if he’s expecting the food to speak to him, to whisper “This is your true heritage, Loki,” he is sadly disappointed. The food is heavy and garlicky, and although he enjoys it well enough—very hearty and warming, which is welcome on this cold night—it’s not something he thinks he’d like to eat often.

It’s silly to feel so disappointed. It’s just . . . he’d really been hoping to feel a sense of belonging here. Because if he doesn’t belong in Jotunheim, and he doesn’t belong in Asgard, where does he belong?

Sif is too busy eating and chatting with a waiter to notice, and he allows her voice to pull him from his brown study. So when she asks how he’s enjoying his meal, he’s able to be quite cheerful when he says he really likes the dumplings.

Sif grins at him. “I love this restaurant. I’ve eaten here at least twice a week the whole six months I’ve been here.” Her expression softens. “I’m glad I got to come one more time. I would’ve been sad to miss it because of the storm.”

“Yes, I can tell you came here a lot,” he says. “As it seems like you know everyone on the staff.”

“It’s all one family, and they all love the Giants,” Sif says. “When I mentioned I work for the team, I became everyone’s best friend.”

Loki smiles at that. “Even with that as an in, though, you’re really good at striking up a conversation with strangers.”

“I’m sure you are too,” she shrugs. “Going off to university in another country, going off to work in another city, consulting all over the world: you probably meet a lot of strangers.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m good at talking to them,” he admits. “I manage to offend people as often as not.”

It’s sweet, the way she laughs as though she thinks he can’t have been serious.

“Have you ever thought about leaving Asgard?” he asks. “I mean, I know you did, you’re here, but you’re going back. And other than the last six months, you’ve lived there all your life. Haven’t you ever wanted to leave?”

“Yeah,” she says softly and wistfully. “Don’t get me wrong, I love it there; it’s my home. But I'd like to visit more places. See more of the world. Maybe live in some other countries.”

And it’s not reasonable or realistic, but he can’t help imagining himself asking her to see the world with him, to not go back to Asgard and to run away with him instead. It’s a lovely idea. But it’s absurd.

As Sif proves when she says, “Obviously not for a while, though. I’m still under contract to the Warriors; I need to go back there for a few more years.” But then she smiles a little. “But someday.”

Too bad about the contract. And too bad about Loki being too big a coward to ask Sif such an audacious question.

When they leave an hour later, full and happy and smelling faintly of garlic, it’s fully dark and the temperature has dropped. Even in his borrowed hat and scarf, Loki shivers.

Sif snorts. “Did you prepare at all for the weather here?”

“I looked up weather reports,” Loki sniffs. Then he admits, “But I didn’t really have a frame of reference for just how cold ‘below freezing’ can really be.”

She steps close, winding her arm through his. “Let’s huddle together for warmth, then. So, leaving Midgard to come here—was that kind of spur of the moment?” 

“No, I planned it. Just . . . maybe not well.” In truth the idea had been growing in the back of his mind since the day he learned the truth: why not come see the city where he was actually born?

“Well, I hope your boots are up to the walk,” she says. “I think it’s getting a little slippery here.” They’ve cleared and salted the sidewalks, but there are still treacherous patches.

“I’m fine,” says Loki, and in that moment his foot flies out from under him and he begins to topple to the ground. Instinctively he reaches for Sif in the same moment that she reaches for him, but instead of her holding him up, he drags her to the ground.

The next thing he knows, he is on his back on the sidewalk with a dull ache in his tailbone, and Sif is sprawled across his chest. And the movies are wrong: it is not romantic and charming, it is painful and cold.

But Sif is laughing already, and that makes it better. To smile in the face of adversity is an ability he’s always wished he could cultivate; maybe he just needs to keep Sif around to do it for him.

He’s just saying, he’d agree to that arrangement if she would.

“Maybe we should get inside before someone sprains an ankle,” Sif recommends.

“Good plan,” Loki agrees.

. . . . . .

_“Here comes a big one!” Thor yells, and before Loki can do anything more than turn around and stare in dismay, a wave comes up the shore and destroys the sand castle that the brothers have just spent a half-hour building._

_The water splashes Thor halfway up to his knees, and immediately he is laughing and running out to splash in the surf, the sand castle already forgotten._

_But Loki cannot forget—although he doesn’t know it yet, that is his curse, to never forget hurts he experiences—and he stands there next to the wet mounds of sand that used to be his sand castle, trying to hold back his tears._

_“Oh, dearest one,” says his mother, dropping to her knees in the sand in front of him. “What do you say I help you build another one? A little bit farther up the beach, where the waves won’t get it?”_

_“Aren’t you talking to Dad?”_

_She smiles reassuringly. “Your father had to go inside to do some work.” (That is why Odin likes the Alfheim beach house so well: it is only a few steps from beach time with his family to work time in his comfortable study. He leaves his family out on the beach fairly often.) “So I’ve gots of time to help you with your sand castle.”_

_So Loki follows his mother to a new spot, but as she begins filling a pail with damp sand, his eyes are drawn to where Thor is splashing in the waves under the watchful eye of the lifeguard. And he cannot help asking, “Why isn’t Thor sad about the sand castle?”_

_What lingers uneasily in the back of his mind, but what he at seven years old does not have the self-awareness to fully understand or vocabulary to articulate, is the increasing sense he has that he and Thor are fundamentally different from each other. And here it is in sharp relief: Thor has already forgotten about the destruction of their beautiful sand castle and has happily moved on to the next activity, while Loki is still bothered by it, still thinking about it, unable to move past it. There’s a difference there, and he does not know why they’re so different, but he does know that kids and adults alike seem to prefer Thor’s easygoing charm to Loki’s quiet watchfulness._

_But Frigga senses some of what Loki cannot say, and she pulls Loki into her lap, already mourning the day when he is too big for this. “You and Thor are different from each other, sweetheart. You like different things. Sometimes you feel different things. And that doesn’t mean that either one of you is good or bad. You’re both wonderful just as you are, and the things that make you different are the things that make you special.”_

_Loki accepts that explanation and leans happily against his mother’s shoulder. And she smooths down his hair and wonders, as she does a thousand times a day, if she’s doing enough to help Loki know that he belongs here, that he is a part of this family, even if he is nothing like his adopted brother or father. She worries about this little foundling she has taken in as her own, with his sensitive heart and his inquisitive mind and his easily bruised feelings. She worries whether she is doing enough to make sure he feels safe and happy and wanted. She wonders whether his long-dead birth mother is looking down on her efforts with approval or concern._

_But one thing Frigga knows she can do is make sure her little boy never doubts how much she loves him. So she pulls him close and kisses his dark hair and says “I think you’re perfect just as you are. And you know mothers are never wrong.”_

_“Mothers can be wrong,” comes the sassy reply, because this is Loki. But he turns in her lap to wrap his little arms around her in a hug. And it’s enough for now._

. . . . . .

Loki and Sif fall asleep that night to a movie, each curled under cozy blankets on their own couches. Loki wakes in the darkness and turns his head to see that the TV has turned itself off and that the clock on the DVD player reads 1:14. He blinks a few times and realizes that what woke him was Sif breathing heavily, just shy of a snore, on the other couch.

He smirks to himself, finding it strangely endearing that she should snore, and chucks a spare throw pillow at her to wake her up and tell her they need to get to their own beds. But Sif simply shifts positions and falls back to sleep, now silent. Loki watches her a moment, or more accurately he watches the dark lump that is all he can make out in the dim lights from outside.

He should get up and go to his room; it’ll be more comfortable, and besides, there’s a part of him that’s terrified that he’ll do something in his sleep—snore or sleep talk or make a weird face or something—and embarrass himself in front of Sif. But he’s too tired, and too comfortable, and also—his last coherent thought before succumbing to his fatigue—there’s something surprisingly nice about just allowing himself to relax around another person for once.

He closes his eyes and slips back into sleep.

The next morning, Sif wakes a half-hour later than Loki, thanks to him having the morning sun directly in his face but her being protected from it by the position of her couch. She stretches and yawns, then looks around the room, blinking blearily. When her eyes fall on Loki, sitting on the other couch, still in yesterday’s clothes with the blankets spread over his legs, she seems to remember what happened. 

She climbs from her couch to check out the window. “Bright and sunny!” she reports. “And the roads are looking pretty decent.” She returns to her couch and climbs under the blankets again, although she stays sitting up this time. “So, this is my last full day in Utgard,” she observes. “You have any plans today? Anything you want to go do?”

Loki’s been thinking about this since he woke up—been thinking about it since he came to this apartment and found Sif already living here, really. He’s been thinking about why he came here and why he left Asgard, and why he’s been pushing everyone away for so long and how all his secret keeping has made Sif feel, and how much he enjoyed spending yesterday with her and how much he treasures her friendship, and how he’s sick of keeping her at arm’s length, and how nice it was to let his guard down last night and trust her enough to allow himself to fall asleep in her presence. And he’s come to an astonishing and terrifying decision that nonetheless feels more right than anything he’s done in a long time. So he steels himself and nods.

“Yeah, I was thinking today would be a good day to do what I actually came to Jotunheim for,” he says.

“Oh?” she says. “What’s that?”

“There’s an area called Hrymer on the edge of the city.” He takes a deep breath. “I’m going to go there to see if I can learn anything about my birth parents.”

Sif’s eyes grow wide, and then her brows furrow, but she says nothing at first, seemingly just processing that information. (She’s taking this a lot better than he did, certainly.) And when she finally speaks, she says, “That explains a lot, actually.”

He can’t help it: he breathes out a noisy sigh of relief. (What is it about Sif that makes him lose his iron grip of control on himself? Wait, don’t answer that, he already knows.)

Sif smiles a little at him. “Did you think I was going to freak out?”

He shrugs helplessly.

“I’m sure that was a lot for you to take in, but it doesn’t change much for me—it doesn’t change the things I like about you. It doesn’t change our shared history. It doesn’t change how I feel about you.”

(Some tiny part of him thinks that she sounded a little embarrassed when she said that, that the color in her cheeks heightened just a tad, but he ignores the thought, too focused on her incredible response.)

“Really?”

“Really, Loki.” She hesitates. “And I’m sorry that—I’m guessing from your reaction—you thought my knowing would change things.”

“I didn’t,” he says. “I did. I don’t know.”

Sif’s quiet for a long moment. “How long have you known?” she asks, sounding like she knows the answer.

“Just over a year,” he quietly confirms.

She lets out a whoosh of breath. “I’m sorry, Loki,” she says. “What can I do to help?”

He takes a steadying breath. “Come to Hrymer with me today?”

“Of course,” she says immediately, and he feels like a weight’s been lifted from his shoulders. “When do you want to go?”

“I suppose as soon as we can get ready.”

“I’ll go get ready now,” she says, and stands from her couch to walk over to her bedroom door.

“Thank you,” Loki blurts out when she’s just past his couch. “For. Everything.”

He can’t bring himself to look over his shoulder to watch her reaction, so he’s surprised when he feels her hands on his shoulders, her lips pressed to the top of his head.

“Always,” she murmurs against his hair.

. . . . . .

_“Loki, dearest!” Frigga exclaims when he appears in the dining room doorway. “How unexpected! I had no idea you were coming to town. How wonderful to see you, dear! And so soon after Christmas!”_

_She’s not alone; Odin is sitting next to her at the table, so there’s that decision made. Part of him had wanted to speak to Frigga alone first, and part of him had wanted to confront them both at once. Now he has no choice._

_“Come in, come in,” Frigga says. “We’ve just finished dinner, but there are leftovers. Can I get you anything?” Loki mechanically shakes his head._

_“So what brings you to Gladsheim, my boy?” Odin asks._

My boy. _Something Loki has very much come to doubt today, but still there’s a tiny part of him that, against his better judgment, is pleased to hear Odin say it. Things were tense at first after Loki took the job in Hlidskjalf, but they’ve been slowly getting better; Loki has no doubt that this warm greeting is an olive branch the man is trying to extend to him._

_It does nothing to calm him down._

_Instead of answering, he extends a folded piece of paper toward them with shaking hands; Frigga takes it, a little worry line between her brows, while Odin stands from his chair and leans over her shoulder to look._

_They both frown._

_Loki knows what they’re seeing, having done nothing but stare at the paper since he received it in the mail this morning: as he caught a taxi to the airport, as he purchased an obscenely expensive plane ticket to travel to Gladsheim immediately, as he took a taxi to his parents’ home. So he’s got it memorized: the MyRootsDNA logo in the corner. His name—Loki Odinson—in bold type beneath it. The pie chart showing the estimates of where he comes from, based on his genetic makeup._

_Svartalfheim: 6%_

_Nidavellir: 9%_

_Jotunheim: 85%_

_“We don’t have any ancestry from any of those places,” he says evenly. “You’ve told me a thousand times: we’re all Aesir and Vanir, as far back as anyone knows. So someone here has been very wrong about something.”_

_Odin and Frigga stare back at him a long moment. And then Odin sighs. “I knew those DNA tests were going to cause trouble the moment I heard about them.”_

_It’s true, then. Loki falls heavily into the nearest chair and presses his hand to his mouth._

_Frigga sets the paper down on the table. “You are our son, Loki—”_

_“And who was I before that?” he demands._

_She sighs heavily. “You were born in Jotunheim. In the city of Utgard.”_

_“How? Why?”_

_“We’d gone to inspect a factory your father owned there, in the Hrymer district, and met the manager and his wife for lunch. The manager’s wife had a baby with her, and when we commented on what a lovely child he was, she explained that he was not hers, but the parents had died just a few days before, and she was looking after the child while they figured out what to do.”_

_“And you decided you wanted a souvenir?” Loki snaps._

_“Don’t speak to your mother that way,” Odin commands. “They could find no other relatives, no one who could take you. No one there could have_ afforded _to take you. And you don’t know what Jotunheim was like twenty-seven years ago: the government was corrupt and incompetent, the whole country still in shambles after the war. I knew the kind of orphanage they would have taken you to. You should be thankful we saved you from that.”_

_Trust Odin to turn this into a chance to brag about his beneficence. “And my parents?”_

_“Employees at the factory, who’d passed away,” Frigga says simply, but he knows her well enough to read the subtle shift in her gaze._

_“What aren’t you saying?”_

_They say nothing._

_He slaps a hand on the table. “Tell me!” he shouts hoarsely, and doesn’t realize until he hears the strain in his voice that he’s started crying._

_Frigga winces, and Odin scowls. “Murder-suicide,” he answers shortly, and Loki rears back as though he’s been slapped._

_The fight leaches out of him, leaving him staring blankly at the table through watery eyes. “You could have told me what I was from the beginning. Why didn’t you?”_

_“We didn’t want you to feel like you’re feeling right now,” Frigga says gently. “We didn’t want you to feel like you weren’t our son.”_

_“Were you ever going to tell me?”_

_Odin and Frigga exchange looks, and he reads the truth in that glance._

_“You didn’t think I had a right to know?”_

_“You had such a tender little heart, Loki,” Frigga says helplessly. “We knew you would feel . . .” And she gestures at him._

_“You’re my son,” says Odin. “I wanted only to protect you from the truth.”_

_Loki stares at the table a long time, and then he chokes out a watery laugh. “It might have helped,” he admits._

_Odin sounds surprised. “What do you mean?”_

_He looks up into the eyes of the man he was raised to call Father, the man who gave him everything except unconditional love. “I’ve always known you didn’t want me,” he says in a wavering voice. “It might have helped to know that there was a reason, that it wasn’t just that I wasn’t good enough. I might have wasted less time trying to impress you.”_

_Odin’s brows have gathered together in concern. “That is not true, Loki. I have always wanted you, and I have always loved you—”_

_“Does Thor know?” Loki interrupts as though Odin hasn’t spoken._

_Frigga shakes her head, her gaze fixed fervently on Loki’s face. “Loki, you are our son,” she says firmly. “I have loved you from the moment I first held you in my arms. It makes no difference to me that I didn’t give birth to you. You are my son and I love you.”_

_Loki stands slowly from the table, his anguished gaze fixed on the floral centerpiece as he thinks through everything. “I probably believe you,” he says absently. And then he lifts his gaze to hers. “But you saw how he treated me. You saw that he favored Thor in everything and made no attempt to hide it, and you never stopped him.”_

_Frigga chokes out a sob. “Loki—”_

_“You’re right that I haven’t always been a good father.” Odin steps forward. “But I have always loved you. As much as I love Thor. You are my son.”_

_“Am I, though?” Loki demands. He stares at Odin and Frigga, feeling the strange sense that he has never truly looked at them before. And then he turns on his heel and stalks from the house._

_At the Gladsheim airport, he catches another absurdly expensive last-minute flight back to Hlidskjalf. He returns to his apartment and paces all night, ignoring the calls and texts piling up on his phone. In the morning, his decision made, he goes to work and resigns; they owe him more than a month of PTO, so they’re willing to forgo the usual two weeks’ notice. He calls a realtor he knows and arranges to put his apartment up for sale, furniture included. He writes goodbye texts to Darcy and Coulson._

_And then he catches a taxi to the Hlidskjalf airport and climbs on a plane to Svartalfheim, vanishing from Asgard as easily as one might slip from a room._

. . . . . .

The roads are better but they’re not good, and slow-moving traffic makes for slow going. So by the time Loki and Sif have gotten ready for the day, grabbed a late breakfast at the bakery down the street, and fought their way across town to the Hrymer district, it’s after twelve.

Loki could use a minute or two to prepare mentally, so Sif suggests they get lunch first, at a cheap, casual sandwich joint that seems to exist to serve factory workers. Loki feels absurdly out of place in his tailored suit and five-hundred-dollar boots, but it didn’t even occur to him to dress down when he got ready today; this is his daily uniform and has been for years.

“So where are we looking?” asks Sif, who has been remarkably patient about driving into the bad part of town with almost no explanation.

Loki takes a deep breath and gestures out the window of the shop; two blocks away, a blocky concrete building rises above the other buildings. “One of Odin’s factories,” he explains. “Apparently my parents were working there when they died.”

Her brow furrows. “Did they die at the factory?”

Loki shakes his head, although to be honest he’s not sure. He’s scoured the Internet for information about a murder-suicide in Utgard twenty-seven years ago, but Odin was right when he said that Jotunheim was a different place back then; the only newspapers operating in those days were state-run, and they have next-to-no information about any crime in the country. A way for the corrupt government to make themselves look better, no doubt. Two nobodies dying in a poor part of town didn’t even catch anyone’s notice.

And then he jumps ahead in the story, because there’s a good chance Sif will know everything by the end of the day, but he can’t bring himself to tell her how they died just yet. “Apparently the factory manager’s wife was looking after me while they figured out what was going to happen next. Their son now runs the factory; I’m hoping his parents are still around and he can tell me where to find them. If not, maybe there are employees who were around then.”

Sif agrees to that plan, and when they’re done with their sandwiches, they head off on foot to the factory offices. If Loki were sensible, he would’ve called ahead and gotten confirmation that there will be someone there to help them, but this factory is still owned by Odin, and he couldn’t help worrying that somehow the man would get wind of his impending visit and . . . do something about it.

It turns out not to be a problem. They make their way to the factory’s management offices, and Loki is pleasantly surprised at how nicely appointed they are. At the front desk, he approaches the secretary, wondering if she speaks any Asgardian.

“Hello,” he says, “I’m Loki Odinson.”

She understands that much, at least, because her eyes widen, and before he can say more, she picks up a phone and speaks quick, forceful Jotun to someone on the other end. Then she hangs up and wordlessly shows the two visitors to a pair of cushy armchairs; when they’re settled, she bustles away and returns with a selection of soft drinks. Sif’s eyes light up as she accepts a bright yellow one, but Loki waves the rest away with a tight smile, feeling suddenly too anxious to drink anything. They sit back to wait, and after a moment, Sif leans over to set a calming hand atop his. He is thankful for the contact.

Less than a minute later, the elevator door opens, and a tall, lean man in a cheap but carefully pressed suit walks out. He is dark haired and pale skinned, like everyone they’ve encountered here, and he is smiling warmly, if a bit nervously. “You are Loki Odinson?” he asks in accented Asgardian. “Son of Odin Borrson?”

“I am,” Loki says, rising.

“Auðr Naglfarisson,” he introduces himself. “I run this factory for your father?” He almost sounds uncertain on that last part.

Loki realizes what has the man looking worried. “I’m not here on my father’s behalf,” he says quickly. “This isn’t an inspection or anything.”

Auðr looks relieved, and turns to Sif. “And, your wife?”

“Friend,” Loki says, even as some tiny part of him feels pleased that this man thought it was even a possibility. Though when the man walked in the room, they were basically holding hands, so he can’t blame the guy for making that assumption. “Sif Tyrsdottir.”

“My apologies,” says Auðr. “Now, what can I do for you, Mr. Odinson?”

Loki launches into his planned opening. “Your parents ran this factory before you, didn’t they?” The man nods, and Loki explains, “I was hoping to speak to them. I thought they might have information I need about something that happened in the past.” Again Auðr looks worried, and Loki is forced to explain, “There’s nothing wrong with the factory. This is . . . personal.”

“I’m afraid my father passed away four years ago. But my mother still lives with me, not far from here. I could have her here very quickly.”

Sif frowns at that. “We don’t want to force her out into the cold,” she says. “Maybe we could go to her?”

But Auðr has already turned to the secretary, and they have a brief conversation in Jotun. Then he turns to them with a smile. “She will be here in twenty minutes. Until then, I can give you a tour?”

It’s half question, half statement, and Loki and Sif look at each other and shrug. So Auðr leads them onto the main floor of the factory, giving them what sounds like the canned VIP tour, talking about their production of machining tools and how important their products are for other factories and so on. Loki, who had built up a picture in his head of what he expected it to be like—crowded, run-down, poor working conditions—is pleasantly surprised by how bright and open and modern it all is.

Twenty minutes later, Auðr gets a call on his cell phone and leads his guests to a conference room. There’s a old woman with a kind face waiting there, along with a smartly dressed young woman.

“My mother, Nótt,” says Auðr. “And Fenja will be your translator. My mother understands Asgardian, but she does not speak it well.” Then he turns to his mother. “Móðir, þessi er Loki Odinson.”

The old woman’s eyes light up, and she stares at Loki like they are old friends, reunited after years apart. Which, he supposes, they are.

“I think she knows you.” Auðr sounds confused.

“We’ve met before,” Loki says quietly.

Auðr nods. “Should I stay?”

Loki takes a deep breath. “I don’t mind either way,” he says, and catches Sif regarding him with a surprised expression. He means it, though. He’s not going to hide the truth about himself any longer; he thinks there’s been quite enough of that already

So Auðr takes a seat along the edge of the room, and Loki and Nótt sit at the table, close enough to each other that she can reach out and grasp his hands—which she does—with Sif sitting next to Loki and Fenja sitting next to Nótt.

Nótt speaks.

“I did not think I would see you again,” Fenja translates. “It has been many years.”

Loki nods. “I just found out,” he says. “I never knew the truth.”

Nótt gives him a sad smile, and Fenja translates her answer. “It is a hard decision for parents to make, what to tell their children. If it were me, I don’t know what I would do.”

Loki takes a deep breath. “Can you tell me about my parents?”

Nótt’s face lights up with a smile. “Your mother was called Farbauti,” Fenja translates, “and your father Laufey.”

It is the first time Loki has heard his birth parents’ names.

“Farbauti was a dear friend of mine: very intelligent, very—” Fenja stumbles for a moment, looking for the word— “loving. She was from the countryside, but after her parents died, she moved to Utgard to find work. She came to work at the factory, and she married your father, who already worked here.”

“What was he like?”

Nótt’s face darkens a little.

“Very handsome, very—” Again the translator stumbles a little. “He made people like him.”

“Charming,” Loki supplies, and Fenja nods her thanks as Nótt goes on.

“But he was proud, and he became angry easily.”

Well, now Loki knows he comes by those traits honestly.

“He drank too much, and gambled. They never had any money.”

“And what happened?” Loki asks quietly.

Nótt sighs.

“When you were born, Farbauti was so happy. She showed you off to everyone at the factory. She sewed you a beautiful suit for your baptism. But Laufey got worse. There was more . . . pressure.”

Loki nods slowly, and Sif, as though she has guessed where this story is going, leans in closer until her shoulder is warm against his. He is grateful for her touch, and grateful he did not let his pride prevent him from asking her along.

Nótt hesitates, her brows furrowing above her kind eyes, and Loki takes a steadying breath. “Keep going. I can handle it.”

Nótt speaks, and Fenja winces in sympathy before translating. Sif’s hand slides down Loki’s arm until her fingers tangle with his.

“When you were seven months old, your father came home very drunk one night. The neighbors said they heard shouting. No one knows the cause of the fight. Laufey shot Farbauti and then himself.”

Sif’s hand tightens around Loki’s, and he grips back just as tightly. “How lucky he didn’t turn the gun on you,” she breathes.

Nótt hears her and nods emphatically. “It is a miracle you are alive,” she says in halting Asgardian.

Loki has never thought of his existence as a miracle. “So you took me in?” he asks Nótt.

“Jotunheim was . . . bad then,” says Nótt in her broken Asgardian. “Government was bad. No police in Hrymer; they only protect borders, and rich people. You—” She breaks off, frustrated, and reverts to Jotun.

“She says when the police finally came, they didn’t know what to do with the baby,” Fenja translates. “There was no . . . government department for helping children. Nowhere to take care of you while they looked for more family. But Nótt knew Farbauti had no family, and she asked Laufey’s friends and they said the same. So she told the police she would look after you until they had another plan. But she knew you would end up in an orphanage, and she knew how terrible that would be.”

Again the old woman grasps Loki’s hands.

“She says, I wanted to keep you so much,” Fenja translates. “But I could not.”

. . . . . .

_“Why not?” Frigga asks, her brow furrowed._

_Nótt sighs wearily, the sorrow and worry of the last week weighing down her shoulders. “I already have three children,” she explains through the translator Odin brought with him. “Our government has laws about this: only two children for each couple. We had to pay a heavy fine to have our Eisa. If we adopt a fourth, the government could revoke my husband’s permits to run this factory—or put him in prison.”_

_“Will someone here take the baby?”_

_Nótt shakes her head, tears sparkling in her eyes. “People here have their own children to feed. They cannot afford it.”_

_“And does this country have foster care?”_

_Nótt does not know the phrase in Asgardian or in Jotun. “I do not understand.”_

_“I assume that’s a no, then,” Frigga sighs. “The poor child!”_

_This was meant to be an adventure for her; she does not often accompany her husband on work trips. And at first it was wonderful: the old town section of Utgard is absolutely delightful, all medieval stone buildings and winding streets, and the hotel they’re staying in is fit for a king. A business associate of Odin’s owns a very nice car, and he took them on a few day trips into the Jotunheim countryside; it is easily one of the most beautiful places she’s ever been, all rolling hills and picturesque farm houses. They’ve enjoyed themselves so much for the past week that they’ve talked about getting a home here, in the old section of town; Odin could use it when visiting his factory, and Frigga could take Thor out to explore the countryside._

_But today they’re seeing the darker underbelly of Utgard, the part that Frigga rather suspects their government and business contacts would rather they didn’t see. But they can’t stop Odin from visiting his factory, and Frigga had wanted to tag along._

_The poverty they’ve seen in Hrymer astounds her, though Naglfari, the factory manager and their host, has been optimistic: “Our economy will grow, now that the war is over. And we will have open democratic elections next year. Things will get better in Jotunheim.”_

_Frigga applauds his positive attitude, but when they have a moment alone, she pulls Odin aside and insists that he make sure the employees here are well paid and have good working conditions; she will not allow her husband to contribute to the general squalor of Hrymer. He informs her that he had the same thought._

_But somehow, the thing that has touched her heart the most today is the little dark-haired baby sitting in the manager’s wife’s lap at lunch. Nótt had told the story of how she came to have the baby: two factory workers, a drunken and angry husband, a fight that escalated to murder and then suicide, a baby left orphaned in a harsh, unforgiving land. Frigga needed a translator for the details, but she had understood Nótt’s heavy tone perfectly well._

_And now the woman is telling her that she legally cannot keep the baby. Frigga has not seen any of the orphanages in Utgard, but she thinks she can make an educated guess about what they would be like—especially the type of orphanage where the son of a penniless murderer would go._

_Her heart heavy, she looks down at the little boy. Blissfully unaware of his precarious circumstances, he looks up at her and chooses that moment to give her a massive grin, his little eyes squinting into half moons. Frigga’s heart melts._

_“What is his name?”_

_Nótt understands that question without the aid of the translator. “Loki,” she says,_

_Frigga smiles a little at that. “That is an Asgardian name as well. I have a great-grandfather named Loki.” And she looks at the baby for a long moment, deliberating. If she asks the question on the tip of her tongue, she will start down a path she doesn’t think she’ll be able to turn back from._

_Who does she think she’s fooling? She’s already on that path. “May I hold him?”_

_Nótt obligingly passes the baby over, and Frigga was right: when she feels the warm weight of little Loki in her arms, when he cuddles up to her, she knows she will not leave Jotunheim without this child._

_Odin walks in then with Naglfari, and looks curiously at his wife holding a strange baby. And Frigga takes a deep breath and prepares for the most important persuasive speech she will ever give._

_In the end, it’s not hard to convince Odin. The first time he leans close to Loki, the little boy grins and gurgles; Odin reaches out one long finger, and Loki wraps his hand around it and tries to shove it into his mouth. Odin’s eyes crinkle in a smile, and Frigga knows her husband has fallen for this baby too._

_“It may not be easy,” he says. “International adoptions are complicated, and can take months.”_

_Frigga normally tries to avoid being one of_ those _rich women, but this feels like the right moment to make an exception to that rule. “You know people,” she says. “Throw your weight around.”_

_Odin laughs, then turns back to Loki. “You will learn, little one, that this is a very wise woman. You’d do well to listen to her.”_

_Frigga beams at him. And they go back to the table to tell Nótt they want to take Loki home with them._

. . . . . .

“For one year,” Nótt says firmly in Asgardian, “I pray every night to thank God for sending them here. For sending Frigga and Odin to you.”

Her words echo in Loki’s ears for the rest of the afternoon: as she tells him more details about his parents and where they came from. As she reminisces about her dear friend Farbauti. As she offers to take him to where their tiny little flat used to stand, before it was bulldozed to widen a road (they thank her, but decline). As he tells her about the life he’s lived in Asgard and Vanaheim. As they get a picture together on his phone. As she wraps her arms around him in a tight embrace, and tells him to call if he ever has any more questions about his past.

Auðr is quiet and hesitant as he walks them down to the lobby. Loki guesses what’s on his mind and says, “I don’t expect you to keep anything you learned confidential,” he says. “I’m tired of my parents treating my past like it’s a dirty secret. But I’d prefer you didn’t mention my being here today to anyone at my father’s company back in Asgard.”

“Don’t endanger your job, though,” Sif cuts in, and Loki nods his agreement.

“Don’t lie, if asked, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t volunteer the information.”

Auðr smiles and agrees and bids them farewell. And Loki walks out into the cold Jotun afternoon, feeling . . . lost.

Sif stands silently beside him, clearly waiting for him to make a move.

Down the street, he can see a patch of dead grass: a strip by the waterfront that’s been turned into a little park. He walks mechanically towards it, and finds a bench on which he can sit and look at the partially frozen river. It is the dreariest scene imaginable: dead grass, gray water, muted factories on the other shore.

After a moment he hears Sif approach and sit on the other end of the bench. He sees movement from the corner of his eye, and turns to see her offering him a tissue. “I grabbed some at the office,” she explains, and that’s when the tears Loki has been stubbornly ignoring finally spill down his cheeks.

He ignores the tissue in favor of turning away and scrubbing at his cheeks, his face burning red, as though maybe somehow he’ll keep her from noticing what she’s already noticed.

“Take the tissue, Loki,” she says gently. “I’m pretty sure I’ve told you more than once that the notion that ‘real men don’t cry’ is—”

“Antiquated and damaging to men’s emotional health,” Loki finishes, and finally gives in and takes the tissue.

She smiles gently. “You _were_ listening.” She sounds pleased.

Loki laughs wetly as Sif carefully slides across the bench toward him, moving slowly, like he’s an animal she’s trying not to spook. And when she’s close enough for him to feel her warmth, she gently sets her hand on his upper back.

That opens the floodgates, and Loki cries and cries on a cold park bench while boats slowly pass on the Vimur River.

There’s something cleansing about it, and he supposes Sif might have a point about this whole “telling men to bottle their emotions is bad for them” thing. When finally the tears slow, then stop, he becomes aware that Sif has been gently rubbing his back. He’s freezing cold now, but he’s definitely not going to move while Sif is touching him like that.

After a few moments, Sif speaks quietly. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Thankful for her non-intrusive approach, Loki thinks about this for a few moments. “I feel lost,” he says finally. “I thought this visit would bring me clarity. And I do have answers to a lot more questions now, but . . . I don’t know. I suppose I thought I would come here, and I would get answers, and suddenly, everything would be clear. I’d understand who I am. I’d understand . . . what to do next.”

Sif’s hand settles on his far shoulder, and her thumb starts rubbing over his shoulder blade. “Can I tell you what I think?”

He nods.

“I think people are complex. You’re not just one thing; you’re not the result of just one influence. Trying to understand who you are by visiting Jotunheim is like . . . trying to understand a statue just by visiting the quarry that the marble came from. It’s definitely relevant, but it’s only one piece of the puzzle.”

He blinks. “That’s an interesting point.”

“Thank you,” she says solemnly. “I was very proud of it.”

They sit in silence a little while longer. “Nótt seems to think Frigga and Odin saved me from a terrible fate.”

“She does,” Sif agrees.

He turns to look at her. “Do you think that?”

Sif shrugs. “I mean, yeah?” She lifts both hands and moves them like she’s weighing things on either side of a scale. “Poor orphan, trust fund baby. Poor orphan, trust fund baby. I know which one I’d want to be.”

Both her words and the fact that she’s not touching anymore make him a little sullen. “When you say it like that, it sounds like I’m an idiot for being mad at them.”

“I don’t think you are at all,” Sif says. “But I do think you might be conflating two issues. It seems to me like the big fight was over the adoption, but really what you’re mad about is feeling like Odin always treated you worse than Thor. You learning about the adoption was just the catalyst to start talking about it.”

He shrugs. “I guess that’s true.”

“So, you know, what are you really mad about? And who are you really mad at? And what do you really want, and do you feel like your current behavior is in line with all of the above?”

He glances over at her with a half smile. “When did you get so wise?”

“I was born this way,” she says with dignity.

They fall silent again, and then Loki finally lets himself ask the question that’s been on the tip of his tongue since he saw Sif three nights ago: “How’s my—how are they?”

She understands. “You want the real answer or the answer that won’t make you feel guilty?” she asks bluntly.

He recoils a little, but forces himself to say, “The real answer.”

“You broke Thor’s heart,” she says without preamble, and Loki winces. “Your parents haven’t told him anything, so he has no idea why you left, and why you won’t talk to him, and it’s killing him. He doesn’t laugh as much as he used to, he doesn’t smile like he used to. He’s just . . . less Thor than he used to be. But he still has this touching faith that someday you’ll come back and that you’ll have a really good reason for what you did.”

Sif certainly knows how to cut him to the quick. “I take it back,” he mumbles. “I want the answer that won’t make me feel guilty.”

“Do you?” she asks, and he considers, then relents.

“No,” he admits reluctantly, and braces himself for the next blow. “How’s . . . Frigga?”

“Do you really need me to answer that question?” she asks.

Again he considers, and then admits, “No.”

“Odin looks ten years older than he did this time last year,” she goes on.

“Well, that he deserves,” Loki says sharply.

Sif shrugs helplessly. “You guys have a very complicated relationship.”

“Seems straightforward to me. Seems like he never loved me like he did Thor, because I wasn’t the heir, and I wasn’t a little Odin clone like Thor was, and because I wasn’t—” He falls silent a moment. “His,” he finishes. “Not really. I wasn’t his flesh and blood. I wasn’t his real son.”

Sif starts rubbing his back again. “I found you crying over something your dad said too many times for me to try to claim that he’s not a terrible father. Just . . . are you sure that those were his reasons? Rich guys who work too much don’t always make great fathers. Believe me, I know.”

Loki shoots a worried glance her way. He’s always known that she’s not the absolute closest with her parents, but has he been ignoring her pain while he’s focused on his own?

She gives him a half-smile and goes on. “I know it doesn’t fix things, but . . . would it make his crappiness less crappy if it wasn’t personal? If it wasn’t that he had a problem with you, it’s just that he’s a stodgy old rich man who believes that you should only show affection to dogs and horses? Who believes that there’s exactly one proper way to be a man, and he doesn’t know how to deal with people who don’t conform to that? Which is probably exactly how his father was, and his father before that?”

A memory comes into Loki’s mind, of one of Coulson’s favorite cutesy sayings: “There are three sides to every story: my side, your side, and the truth.” The therapist used to use it to try to convince Loki that he should be open to the possibility that his perception of reality is colored by his own biases.

Is it possible that Odin never disliked him personally, but that his own upbringing and situation in life just made him into a generally poor father?

And how sad is that the possibility is an improvement over what Loki currently believes of his father?

“It might make him a sliver less crappy,” he concedes stiffly, and Sif tips toward him so she can wrap her arms around him in a hug and rest her cheek against his shoulder.

“Loki?” she says after a few long (delightful) moments.

He forces himself to stop holding his breath. “Yes?”

“We’re going to die out here if we don’t get somewhere warm soon.”

He laughs softly. “Agreed. Let’s go home.”

. . . . . .

_“Dad! Dad, look!”_

_Odin is greeted by an exuberant seven-year-old the moment he opens the door. “Well, hello, Loki. Were you waiting for me?”_

_Loki nods vigorously. “Look what I made! I want to show you.”_

_“All right,” Odin agrees affably, setting his briefcase down and allowing himself to be led by the hand into the boys’ playroom. Thor is nowhere in sight—probably still upstairs sick, poor lad—but Loki has toy building blocks spread all over the floor in what Odin assumes aren’t just random piles, though he can’t identify any of them. In the center of the floor is something snapped together out of colored bricks: tall and cylindrical, nearly half Loki’s height, with bits sticking out at the bottom._

_“See, Dad? Do you know what it is?”_

_Odin lifts his eyes helplessly, looking for a clue, and is pleased to see his wife in the doorway, mouthing the word “rocket.”_

_He looks down at his son. “Is it a rocket?”_

_Loki is thrilled. “Yes! See, here’s the fins, and the nose cone. Nose cones make rockets . . . ae-ro-dy-na-mic.”_

_Odin beams down at him. “You are such a clever boy! You’ve been reading that rocket book you got for your birthday, haven’t you?”_

_Another vigorous head nod. “So this is the rocket,” he says, then runs to another block structure. “And this is the space station.” In one corner of the room is a picture book on the ground with blocks piled around it, which Loki identifies as the launch pad, and in another corner is what he describes as “an alien moon.”_

_“This is very good, Loki.”_

_Loki grins. “Will you play with me? We can make the rocket fly around!”_

_And Odin freezes. He glances up at Frigga, who is giving him a pleading look, then down at Loki, who is staring up at him with wide eyes. And he grimaces. “Maybe your mother will play with you,” he says, and Frigga and Loki both deflate at the same time. “Or Thor, when he’s feeling better?” he tries._

_“Thor doesn’t like rockets,” Loki says so quietly that it can barely be heard, and Odin looks helplessly at Frigga._

_She looks mad enough to spit, but she modulates her tone as she says cheerfully, “Actually, Loki, it’s almost time for dinner. Will you run to the bathroom and wash your hands?”_

_Loki obediently leaves the room, and Frigga watches him go fondly, then turns her furious gaze on Odin (who wishes very much that she wasn’t blocking the only exit from the room). “Why couldn’t you have played with him?” she demands. “Twenty minutes. That’s all he needed from you.”_

_“I have a conference call with Nifflheim at six.”_

_She glances at her watch. “Fine, ten minutes. Or you could have promised to play with him when you were done.”_

_Odin hesitates, then admits, “I don’t . . . know what he wants from me. I don’t know what to do with all this.”_

_“You do fine with Thor.”_

_“Thor wants to kick a ball around! I understand that! But rocket ships? Space stations?” He gestures helplessly at the blocks all around him. “I barely played with toys even when I was a child. And that was forty years ago. I have no idea what to do with a request like that.”_

_“Play with him!” Frigga exclaims. “Pick up the rocket and fly it around the room! It’s not brain surgery! He’s your son, Odin. His memories of you are going to be all you working, or kicking a ball around the back garden with Thor, while he plays alone.”_

_“I will try to do better,” he promises. “I will try to figure out what Loki wants from me. But right now I need to prep for my call with Nifflheim.”_

_And he means his promise, spurred on partly by Loki’s sad eyes and partly by Frigga’s angry ones. But the conference call unearths a complication with the acquisition he’s working on, and he spends the entire evening, and the next three days, working on it almost non-stop._

_And when he finally goes to the playroom four days later, ready to play rockets, Loki is nowhere to be found, and the blocks have all been disassembled and put away, and it’s like the rocket never existed at all._

. . . . . .

It’s after five by the time they reach the apartment. Loki is chilled through from their time in the park and the not-nearly-warm-enough taxi ride, so he goes to take a hot shower, while Sif goes to finish up her packing; her flight leaves in less than 18 hours. Loki has no idea what he’ll do then; the thought of traveling alone has lost some of its appeal. The thought crosses his mind again of asking Sif to come with him to Alfheim, but as what? His roommate? His emotional support animal? Besides, she’s got her contract with the Warriors to complete.

After the shower, he half-heartedly checks his email, but ends up just sitting on the edge of his bed, staring out the window, until Sif knocks gently on the door.

She’s showered too, apparently; he can smell her body wash. It’s sweet torture.

“You want Mimir’s again tonight? Or do you want to try somewhere new?”

His response is “I want to do whatever you want to do,” which is the sort of thing Loki would only ever say to Sif.

Sif grins. “Mimir’s again, then.”

So they go to Mimir’s, and it’s better than last time. Not the food, the food’s the same, but the conversation. Sif has learned his secrets—not all of them, as she still has no idea that he’s been in love with her since he was eleven, but his adoption and his drunken, violent birth father—and it’s like a cork has been removed from a bottle, and now conversation can flow freely.

They talk about everything (almost). He tells her in detail about the DNA test that revealed the truth and his subsequent fight with his parents. She admits her parents firmly disagreed with her taking the job with the Warriors—not sufficiently ladylike—and that she took the temporary position in Jotunheim partly to get some breathing room from them. He tells her why he didn’t take a job at his dad’s company, and she says that Thor told her he suspected as much but never knew for sure.

They talk about fun things, too: scrapes they got into as kids, and pranks she and Thor helped him pull on their teachers. What their high school friends are up to now. Places they have visited and places they’d like to visit. Movies they’ve seen and books they want to read.

They talk for hours, until the staff begin closing up for the day, and then Sif embarrassedly apologizes to them for taking the table all night. She tells them she’s leaving in the morning and bids them all a fond farewell, and asks Loki to snap a picture of her with the staff on her phone.

Loki’s happy to do so, and he’s happy to step out into the cold with Sif clinging to his arm. He’s feeling loose-limbed and warm and happy, and he only had a small glass of wine at dinner, so it wasn’t that. It’s that, with a few hours’ distance and perspective, he’s actually feeling pleased with the visit to Hrymer: it didn’t give him the clarity he wants, but thanks to Sif, at least now he knows that if he’s trying to figure out who he is, and what to do next, the answers don’t lie solely in a factory on the edge of Utgard. He is more than where he came from: he’s also where he’s been since then and the choices that he makes. The realization is liberating.

And most of all, it’s Sif with her arm through his, her husky voice floating on the frosty air as she tells him a funny story about one of the Giants players. He’d feared that the terrible Sweethearts Dance had ruined their friendship forever, and then he’d worried that going to university in different countries had ruined their friendship forever, and then he’d worried that not taking the job in Gladsheim had ruined the friendship forever, and then he’d worried that him leaving Asgard and vowing never to return home or speak to his family had ruined their friendship forever. But right now it feels stronger than it has in years. Right now he feels that she truly likes him.

“You actually like me, don’t you?” he hears himself say. “We’re actually friends.”

Okay, so maybe drinking as seldom as he does, even a single glass of wine can loosen his tongue a little more than he’d like.

Sif stares at him, but they’ve reached the apartment building, so she doesn’t respond until they’ve greeted the doorman and gotten on the elevator and are on their way to the sixth floor. And then she looks up at him. “Loki, have you been doubting that?”

He shrugs, suddenly very uncomfortable, because somehow talking about his and Sif’s feelings about each other feels equally as scary as telling her he’s adopted and letting her come hear the story of how his birth father killed his birth mother in a drunken rage.

He decides that he sounds really messed up when you put it that way.

“We haven’t really seen each other much in the last ten years,” he points out.

“I know,” she says. “And I’ve regretted that for a long time. Even before you disappeared.”

The elevator door opens; as they head toward the apartment, she admits, “I’ve been wanting to do something about it for a long time. For years. But every time I thought about reaching out . . . I always thought that you didn’t want to talk to me.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because you never talked to me.”

“Fair enough,” he admits as she unlocks the door. “But I thought the same thing. I thought you’d reach out if you wanted to talk to me, and since you didn’t, you must not have wanted to.”

“So we’ve both been idiots.” Her voice is serious, but there’s a touch of a smile on her face.

“Apparently,” he agrees.

Now safely ensconced in the cozy apartment, they divest themselves of coats and boots.

“Look, Loki,” she says, “I still don’t know what your plans are after I leave tomorrow, but personally, I’m not okay with us going back to never speaking to each other.”

His chest is filling up with sunlight. “I don’t want to lose touch with you again either,” he confesses. He hesitates, then holds a hand out for her phone. “I’ll give you my number. I got rid of my old one after I left Asgard. Obviously.”

So she hands over her phone and he navigates to his name in her contact list (why is it so absurdly thrilling to see his name there, “Loki” with no last name which might mean that he’s the only Loki she knows but it might mean that he’s the most important one to her so he’s the one who doesn’t need a last name) and changes the number, and then he texts himself so he has Sif’s number.

Sif smiles gently at the phone, and then at him, and his heart kicks into overdrive. But then she looks over at the clock on the microwave. “Nearly eleven,” she observes. “I need to leave at 8:30 tomorrow for my flight.” Her expression turns bittersweet. “I kind of don’t want to leave.”

He blames the wine for the fact that he immediately responds “I don’t want you to leave,” which is absurd. Deep down he knows he hasn’t drunk anything like enough to start oversharing to that extent; the truth is that these are things he wants to say out loud, but would never dare do so without the excuse of alcohol.

“You could come back to Asgard some time,” she says hopefully. “Even if it were just for a visit.”

He gives her a pained smile.

“I know,” she sighs. “It’s complicated. But does it have to be this complicated? I know you don’t want to be near your dad, or maybe it’s your whole family. But . . . Asgard’s a big country. Gladhseim’s a big city.”

“I can’t,” he says, firmly ignoring the little voice in the back of his mind that points out that maybe he can. She’s right: it’s a big city.

She gives him a sad half smile. “In that case,” she says, “let’s enjoy tonight.” And she walks to the wall and turns all the lights off.

“Umm?” he says uncertainly, not knowing where she is until suddenly the living room curtains are thrown back.

“Your favorite view, right?” she asks, turning back to look at him so that she is nothing but a silhouette, outlined by the lights outside. “Then I want to enjoy it with you one last time.”

She really is wonderful—warm and caring and strong. It occurs to him, as he crosses the room to her, that if it were any other woman, some of this behavior could look like flirting: her touching him so much, and talking about how much she’ll miss him, and remembering things he’s said to her, and wanting to create these lovely moments with him. But this is Sif; she doesn’t feel that way about him. He learned that the hard way.

He sits beside her on the carpet and gazes out at the city lights. It looks different than it did two nights ago, or at least he feels different looking at it. The city no longer holds the secrets of his past and the promise of finding his future. Now it is just a lovely skyline of a city he happens to have been born in.

They sit in silence a long time, and then Sif asks—is it just a question to pass the time, or is it deeper than that?— “If you could go back in time and change one thing about your life, do one thing differently, what would it be?”

Nearly everything, is the first answer that pops into his head, but he can’t say that. So instead he says, “I’d need to think about that. What about you?”

She shrugs and doesn’t answer.

A minute later, she says softly, “You ever think about that dance we went to together?”

How could he not? It’s on his mind any time he’s in Sif’s company and some of the time he isn’t. “Sometimes.”

Her gaze is fixed on the carpet, and though her expression is hard to read in the low light, he thinks he sees an uncharacteristic uncertainty there. “We’ve never talked about that night,” she says finally.

Shame and humiliation rush through Loki, leaving him unable to meet her eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says. “For all of it. I shouldn’t have kissed you when you didn’t want me to, and I’m sorry I almost ruined our friendship.”

There’s a long silence. And then Sif, sounding flabbergasted, says, “Wait, what?”

. . . . . .

_This has, without a doubt, been the best night of Loki’s life._

_The fact that he’s even here is amazing, to begin with—that Sif Tyrsdottir, who he has loved in secret since they were eleven, should out of nowhere ask him to the Sweethearts Dance is a miracle he never expected to experience. And it has to mean something, right? Sif is wildly popular; she has guys clamoring for her attention. If she wants to ask a guy to a dance, she has her pick of basically anyone at the school. So to pick him, Loki Odinson—that’s not desperation or lack of options. It has to mean something. And the thought has made him absolutely giddy for the last two weeks._

_And then the dance itself has been amazing. They went to dinner and hung out at the dance with some of Sif’s friends on the track team and their dates, which means that for once he’s not in Thor’s group. And that alone makes him love girls’ choice dances: he loves his brother, he really does, but there’s something so nice about going to a dance and not watching every single girl in the group fawn over the handsome football team captain. He’s had Sif’s attention squarely on him the whole time, something he rarely gets these days, and something that makes him continue to believe and hope that maybe Sif has actually developed feelings for him._

_But he’s pretty sure he’ll die of happiness when she suggests going back to his parents’ house to hang out after the dance._

_Not that he’s going to try anything—he can barely form sentences around her, for goodness’ sake—but it’ll be so nice to actually spend time with her actually alone, not surrounded by all their classmates in the school dining hall where the dance is being held. And they will be totally alone: his parents are out of the country, and Thor’s date has planned for her whole dance group to go to her place after the dance and watch a movie, so he won’t be home for hours._

_It will be just Loki and Sif. Alone._

_When her car parks in front of the Odinson mansion, Loki suddenly panics at the thought of going inside; it’s nicer in the dark, where she can’t see his face. So he suggests they go in the back and check out the new gazebo his mother had built in the massive garden._

_Sif’s quick to agree, and they soon find themselves in the gazebo, which is lit only by the moon and the fairy lights Frigga installed just before she left. The result is enchanting. Sif in a moonlit rose garden, her face illuminated by the gentle golden glow of the fairy lights, is easily the most beautiful sight Loki has ever seen._

_His mouth goes dry._

_So she has to make all the effort to make conversation at first, leaning against one of the pillars in the gazebo, stunning in her crimson dress with her long dark hair worn down and curling. She is kind and gregarious, and soon he has relaxed and is answering her easily, able to remember that this is his best friend Sif, and even if this evening marks a shift in their relationship (please, let this evening mark a shift in their relationship), there’s no reason for him to be nervous around her._

_At some point, one of them shifts a little closer, and the other one follows suit. And then again, and again, until they are leaning against the same railing, their arms brushing. The crown of her head is just level with his eyes, but when she looks up and he looks down, their faces are close. Their conversation peters out, but neither notices. The air is thick with a sort of tension that makes Loki’s breath catch._

_It’s not clear who moves first, though on later reflection, Loki will feel sure it was him. In the moment, though, all he knows is that his lips are on hers and his hand is on her arm and she is gripping the sides of his suit jacket._

_And it’s as terrifying as it is exhilarating. He has no idea what to do—this is his first kiss if you don’t count that time Karnilla kissed him on the playground when they were eleven, which he doesn’t—and his #1 goal is not making an idiot of himself._

_So perhaps he’s lucky that it’s not a very long kiss, though he really hopes he’ll get the chance to do this again soon. It’s Sif who ends it, leaning back a little so she can look him in the face. He cannot read her expression, and he is torn between bliss and self-consciousness._

_But he is caught entirely off-guard when Sif says matter-of-factly, “That is not at all how I expected tonight to go.”_

_His heart sinks like a stone. “What?” he hears himself demand, leaning away from her so they’re no longer touching. He’d thought this was a date—as in, a_ date. _But if that were the case, she wouldn’t have responded like that. She would have known that this outcome was a possibility (if a far-fetched one he never expected to actually occur). And dread fills his heart: did she not actually think this was a date?_

_Is she not actually interested in him?_

_The events of tonight flash through his mind, now seen through this new filter: she asked him on this date as a friend. She asked him to hang out at his parents’ house because she wanted only that: to hang out. He insisted on coming to this romantic, moonlit gazebo; he kept getting close to her; he practically threw himself at her and kissed her without her giving him any indication that she wanted any of it. And she was the one who had to end the kiss, because he wasn’t picking up on any of the hints that she wasn’t into it._

_He stares at Sif, begging her to contradict him, but she just shrugs. “Just—I’d honestly never—I mean, me and you aren’t really—”_

_Yep, it’s as bad as he’d thought, and worse._

_“It was a mistake,” he blurts. “I shouldn’t have—Sif, I’m really not—” He doesn’t know if he’s more heartbroken or humiliated. How idiotic can he be, thinking that Sif Tyrsdottir, of all people, would have just spontaneously developed an interest in him? How could he have believed his stupid wishful heart for even a second?_

_Sif blinks a few times. “You aren’t what?” she asks quietly._

_How in the world are you supposed to have a conversation like this? Loki doesn’t know what to say, and he hates feeling so wrong-footed. He hates feeling out of control._

_“You should go,” he says, more harshly than he means to. “Let’s just—let’s just forget tonight ever happened.”_

_Sif looks at him a long moment, her lips pressed into a tight line, and then she nods. “Fine,” she agrees, and walks away without looking back._

_Loki leans against the railing, his hand pressed to his mouth._

_He has no idea how he’s supposed to face Sif again, now that he's made an idiot of himself throwing himself at a girl who doesn’t feel the same way. Luckily there’s only seven weeks until graduation, and then his family will be on vacation all summer, and then he’ll be off to university._

_He can make it. It’s just seven weeks of avoiding Sif._

. . . . . .

Loki looks up.

“You think that you kissed me and I didn’t want you to?” she clarifies.

He shrugs uncomfortably. “Isn’t that exactly what happened?”

But she shakes her head. “I’m pretty sure that _I_ kissed _you_ and that you were the one who didn’t want it.”

For a moment the world goes very still, as the implications of this statement ring through his mind and echo through the last ten years of his life. “You said,” he insists when he has recovered, “after I kissed you, that this wasn’t how you expected this evening to go.”

“Yes,” she agrees, and when he doesn’t say anything more, she demands, “Wait, you took that to mean that I didn’t want you to kiss me? Since when does ‘unexpected’ mean ‘unwanted’?”

“You did want it?” he asks in a small voice.

There’s a moment of silence, and then Sif scrambles up from the floor. “I need to see your face for this conversation,” she announces, and crosses the room to turn on the lights. “Yeah, _I_ kissed _you_ because I wanted to kiss you. And then all of a sudden you freak out and start insisting that it was a mistake and I should go home.”

He scrambles to his feet as well. “I freaked out because I’d just thrown myself at you when you clearly didn’t want me to, and I thought you were going to hate me!”

“Thrown yourself—Loki, I’m the one who invited myself over, I’m the one who got all cozy, I’m the one who kissed you!”

Loki stares, and suddenly feels very overwhelmed. “So—did you like me back then?”

She shrugs, her gaze on his shoulder, and he can barely reconcile this uncertain version of Sif with the one he knows. “I’d honestly never thought about it before then. You were like a brother to me, so I loved you like a brother. I asked you to Sweethearts because I was sick and tired of dating stupid high school boys and I just wanted a fun, low-stress night at the dance, and I knew that’s what I’d have with you. But then you were so much fun that night, Loki. I think it was because Thor wasn’t in our group that night and you were, you know, more able to be yourself; I know how much you’ve always compared yourself to him. You were charming and attentive and thoughtful. And for the first time, I started seeing you as more than a friend. That’s why I wanted to hang out after the dance; I was considering the possibility of us together for the first time, and I wanted to spend more time with you, to see if I kept feeling that way, and to see if there was any chance you could be interested in me too.”

Loki finds himself leaning against the back of his couch, one hand covering his mouth, as he processes all of this. “Then why did you respond the way you did?”

“Why did I say it was unexpected? Because it was unexpected! And I was trying to get a response from you, to figure out how you felt about me kissing you. And then you freaked out and kicked me out and wouldn’t even look at me for weeks. So I figured that was my answer: you were _very_ not interested in me.”

Loki stares at her for a long few moments, with the thought passing through his head that this is one of those pivotal moments that could change the course of his life. Then he admits, “I was completely in love with you. I had been for years.”

Her eyes light up, but then her brow furrows. “Then why . . . ?”

“I was hoping you’d asked me to the dance because you liked me too,” he admits. “And you wanting to spend time together at my parents’ house, alone . . . it seemed like a good sign. But then I kissed you—well, apparently it was simultaneous enough for us both to think we were the ones who initiated it—and your response was that you hadn’t expected it. And I figured, if you asked me out because you liked me, and that was a genuine date, the kiss wouldn’t have been that unexpected. So the fact that it was unexpected must have meant that you didn’t like me, and that I’d just thrown myself at you with no encouragement. I freaked out because I was furious with myself, not you. And since you started avoiding me after that night—”

“Only because you started avoiding me!” she insists. “So I was certain these feelings were all on my side.” Then she hesitates a moment. “You liked me then?” she clarifies.

He nods.

Sif stares, then takes a few steps forward, her movements and the set of her shoulders determined. “I hadn't really thought of you that way before that night. But I’d started by the time we got to your house. And that kiss—”

Her confidence falters, and she continues in a somewhat quieter voice. “I liked you. And I kept liking you. Even when you wouldn’t look at me. Even when you went off to university.”

The sky must be falling. The world must be ending. That is the only explanation for such an impossible thing happening as Sif saying she’d liked him then, and that she’d kept liking him for a long time after. Did he seriously miss his chance at happiness because he was so insecure that he misinterpreted literally everything that happened that night? “Really?”

She’s not quite meeting his eyes. “And then I was so happy that we seemed to be friends again, when you’d come home for your university breaks, that I didn’t want to ruin that.”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” he confesses, his heart racing, even as he upbraids himself fiercely. If he hadn’t been such an idiot—

“And I put it behind myself—I had to, to move on with my life. But, Loki . . .”

She finally looks up, her eyes meeting his, and he hears himself blurt out, “I’ve never stopped caring about you.”

Her whole face lights up like the sun. “I’ve never stopped caring about you either,” she admits, and in three steps he has wrapped her in his arms. He takes his time as he lowers his mouth to hers, savoring the moment, because his body might be commanding him to move faster but his heart is telling him that this is one of those moments he will remember for the rest of his life, and he wants to thoroughly enjoy and catalog every sensation.

Sif seems very happy to return his slow, thorough attentions, and to bury her fingers in his hair (which is really just superb), and this is so much better than their first kiss. This time, he’s got more experience. This time, they've talked about where they stand with each other, thoroughly and completely, and this isn't going to end with a misunderstanding where she leaves and they never speak of this again.

Leave.

She does have to leave.

He breaks the kiss rather involuntarily, and is gratified to see that she seems as affected and short of breath as he is. “Why’d you stop?” she murmurs, and surges forward to kiss him again.

He’s happy to allow it, but the concern lingers in the back of his mind: she leaves for Asgard tomorrow. What are they supposed to do after this?

Well, if there was ever a time to swing for the fences, he supposes this is it. “Come with me,” he breathes between kisses. “To Alfheim.”

She gives a little sigh that’s also a laugh. “I can’t,” she says, and kisses him again. “I have a contract with the Warriors. Two more years.”

“Break it,” he murmurs against her lips. “I’ll pay your fine.”

She shakes her head and backs up enough to have a proper conversation (keeping her hands looped around the back of his neck); he congratulates himself on how flushed she looks. “That would look bad,” she says. “Really bad, for me, professionally. Word gets around. I’d never get another decent position with another team, once people knew that the Warriors held a spot for me while I came to Jotunheim, and I repaid them by breaking my contract.”

He sighs, his head drooping. “I guess that makes sense.”

She leans in close so she can look up at his face and takes a deep breath. “But you could come with me,” she says hopefully.

He lifts his head to give her an eloquent look.

“I know! I know everything you’re about to say. But I also know that you learned today that your future isn’t in Jotunheim. And I hoped—maybe you’d done some soul-searching, and you realized . . . maybe coming back to Asgard wouldn’t be so bad?”

He looks away from her.

“It’s a big country!” she reminds him. “Gladsheim’s a big city. You don’t have to see . . . anyone you don’t want to. But you could be with me.” She hesitates. “Besides, don’t you think it might be nice to see Thor? Your mother?”

It’s strange, this fierce battle between the old Loki who wants to flee from this conversation and the new Loki who wants to never step out of Sif’s embrace. New Loki is loud and very persuasive. But old Loki has been the way he is for many years, and he settles down in the deep dark cavern that holds all of his hurts and disappointments and resentment and anger and stubbornly refuses to budge.

“I’m not going back to Asgard,” he says firmly, stepping back so that Sif’s hands fall away from his body. “I can’t.”

“But aren’t things different now?” Sif asks softly.

“It took me twenty-seven years to get away. To find my own place. To find a way to be happy. I can’t give that up.”

And now he’s got Sif’s ire up. “Are you happy?” she demands. “Because it seems to me like you’ve been wandering the world like a lonely ghost, living out of suitcases, chasing old memories in the hope that you can figure out who you are and what you want out of life. Is that happiness?”

“It’s a start,” he says stiffly.

“You’ve been trying to figure out who you are; did you ever think of checking in the place that actually shaped you?”

“I already know what’s in Gladsheim,” he says dismissively.

“You haven’t been back in a decade,” she retorts. “You haven’t spent any of your adult life there.” She hesitates, biting her lip. “Two years,” she says. “Then I’ll be done with my contract and we can go anywhere. That’s all. Two years.”

That she sees them still together in two years makes his heart soar. But Asgard—but Gladsheim— 

. . . . . .

_“I’m busy, Loki; ask your mother.”_

_“I don’t know how to play knights, Loki. Why don’t we go play football with Thor?”_

_“Why didn’t you stop Thor from getting into trouble, Loki?”_

_“Your father wanted me to apologize for not being here, Loki; something came up at work. But he’ll be at your next science fair, I’m sure.”_

_“Why don’t you play football, like Thor? That’s a man’s game. Golf is for people who can’t hack it at real sports and lazy CEOs trying to avoid work.”_

_“Dad said he can’t make your concert? Weird, he always comes to my games.”_

_“Thor is my heir! You are not. It is as simple as that, Loki.”_

. . . . . .

“I can’t,” he whispers, backing away. “I’m sorry, Sif. I can’t go back there.”

She’s never been as practiced as he is at hiding her feelings, so he sees the heartbreak splash across her face. He’s about to suggest that maybe they could try a long-distance relationship when she speaks again and makes him quite forget his thought. “So what’s your plan?” she demands, and he imagines it’s pain that’s making her voice sharp. “Are you going to travel the world for the rest of your life to avoid having a real conversation with your father?”

“It’s more complicated than that and you know it,” he snaps defensively. “You said it yourself, you know what my father’s like!”

“Yeah,” Sif says, sounding exasperated, as she takes a step toward him. “I know he’s awful at expressing himself because he’s utterly entrenched in a system that tells him a real man never shows his feelings and doesn’t need to spend that much time with his children, and I know that he understands Thor better because Thor’s more like him; I never meant that he doesn’t love you or that he’s completely beyond the hope of redemption or reconciliation. It’s obvious he loves you, just as much as he does Thor. He just sucks at showing it.”

If she thought this speech would calm him down, she made a grave mistake; part of Loki wants to see the truth in her words, but most of him feels betrayed. “So you’re taking his side now.”

“I’m taking your side!” Her volume is rising to match his. “I’m on team ‘Loki Finds Happiness,’ okay? But I don’t think you’re going to find it never speaking to your family again! Look, I’m not suggesting you move home forever and immediately everything is forgiven and okay again, but I am suggesting that maybe it’s time to try a new path; I don’t know that this one’s taking you anywhere you want to be.”

It’s like she doesn’t understand, doesn’t care, how hard he finds the thought of going back to Asgard. “You don’t understand anything.”

“Apparently not,” she sighs, clearly exasperated.

Hurt and betrayal build in his chest and swirl into anger. “This was a mistake,” he says sharply, gesturing between them. “It was a mistake back then, and it’s a mistake now.”

“I guess so,” she says tightly. “And clearly it’s a waste of time to talk to you when you won’t listen to any voice but your own.” She looks at him a moment, her expression briefly turning defeated and sad, then shakes her head. “Goodbye, Loki.”

And she storms off to bed.

Sif has never lost her cool with him before: he has finally managed to push her past her breaking point. And he stares at her door for a long time before walking to his room.

He packs his suitcase in record time, intent on leaving as soon as possible in the morning. He can’t stay here, where every square inch of the apartment will remind him of Sif. He’ll take the gig in Alfheim, and maybe in two years, he and Sif can revisit this conversation.

He snorts derisively. As though Sif will still be waiting for him in two years. As though she’ll be happy putting herself on ice for a guy who confesses his love and then basically dumps her ten minutes later.

He sinks down on the edge of his bed and drops his head into his hands.

. . . . . .

_Odin finds his son curled up into a tight ball under a tree. “Loki,” he begins softly._

_“I’m never ever getting back on a horse and you can’t make me!” Loki declares passionately, and Odin feels a smile tug at his lips; Loki ever was the dramatic one._

_At nine, Loki is still small enough for his father to pick him up in his arms, but Odin can tell, from one look at the tight little ball of limbs that it is his son, that Loki would not be receptive to that right now._

_So he settles himself on the grass next to him, a little stiffly—that’s what happens when you wait until your late thirties to have children. “That was probably very scary, falling from your pony like that.”_

_“I didn’t fall! She threw me!”_

_“She just got a little startled, and she bolted,” Odin says soothingly. “That’s why you always have to be paying attention, or you can lose your balance and fall. But she’s very nice, I promise.”_

_There’s a part of him that’s tempted to just let this go. They don’t keep horses themselves; Odin learned to ride as a child, but never cared for it enough to make it a lifelong habit. He only rides on the rare hunt with his friends and business associates. But the cousin with whom they’re visiting keeps horses, and Loki had been fascinated with them, so Odin had agreed to teach him. (Frigga’s always telling him that he needs to spend more time with Loki, and she’s probably right.)_

_On consideration, though, he thinks it’s best to convince him to try again, or the boy could develop a lifelong fear of horses._

_“You know, there’s an idiom about this, Loki.”_

_Loki turns his head just enough to look at his father. “What’s an idiom?”_

_“A saying,” says Odin, and sees his son mouth the word “idiom” a few times to himself._

_The delight of learning a new word distracts Loki enough that he asks, “What’s the idiom?”_

_“You’ve got to get back on the horse,” Odin says, and chuckles at Loki’s scowl._

_“That’s not a real saying! You made that up right now!”_

_“I didn’t,” Odin assures him. “It’s a real saying. And it’s important, because if you don’t get back on the horse soon, it will solidify in your mind that horses are bad, dangerous things that you shouldn’t trust. And then you won’t be able to get back on the horse because you’ll be too scared. You don’t want to always be scared of horses, do you, Loki?”_

_For a moment he thinks he’s gotten through to him, but then Loki shakes his head. “But horses_ are _scary! This one threw me. She was mean and scary and she threw me off her back and I’m going to have a bruise and I hate horses.”_

_“Oh, Loki,” Odin sighs, and, seeing that his son has unfurled himself somewhat, puts his arm around his shoulders and pulls him in tight to his side. The boy’s fear and anger at the horse is understandable, but it’s also representative of something he’s always seen in his son. “My dear boy, you have always been so quick to give weight to what hurts, and so slow to forget. I don’t want you to spend your life focusing on what gives you pain.”_

_Loki turns his face up to his father. “But the horse knocked me off.”_

_“Yes, but what was it like before that? How did you like being up on the horse?”_

_Loki considers this a moment, and then his expression lightens. “It was fun,” he admits. “I felt like I was a cowboy. I liked riding around on her. I wish we could have gone fast!”_

_“So there were good parts about being on the horse?”_

_Loki shrugs._

_“If you focus on what hurts you, and forget to focus on what makes you happy, you’re always going to be sad, and you’re always going to be scared. And I don’t want that for you. You’re my son and I love you and I want you to be happy, even when bad things happen.”_

_Loki considers this a long time. Then he says decidedly, “I want to get back on the horse.”_

_Odin smiles gently and briefly tightens his embrace around the boy’s shoulders, then says, “Then let’s go get you back on the horse.”_

_He climbs up from the ground, while Loki pops up with all the vim and vigor of a nine-year-old. The boy slips his little hand into Odin’s, and Odin looks down at him, pleased and surprised; Thor never holds his hand anymore. And together they walk back to the stables._

. . . . . .

A knock on the door startles Loki awake, and he looks around in bleary confusion. The room is bright, because morning sun is streaming through the windows but the overhead lights are also on. He’s on top of the covers, and he’s still dressed in his clothes from yesterday.

Clearly he fell asleep last night while he was sitting on his bed, deep in thought. He forces himself to sit up.

“I can hear you moving in there,” comes Sif’s voice from outside the door. And Loki suddenly remembers that it was knocking that woke him up. He winces, remembering last night.

“Fine, don’t talk to me,” she sighs after a few moments. The doorknob rattles, as though Sif has set her hand in it, but it doesn't turn; maybe she changed her mind. Maybe she's trying to respect his privacy. “I’m leaving for the airport now. I’m sorry about last night, Loki. And—I wish you all the best. You have my number; don’t be a stranger. And if you ever find yourself in Asgard . . .” He can hear the helplessness in her voice as she finishes, “Look me up.”

And he hears her step away from the door and walk across the apartment, hears the front door open and shut. And he sits on the edge of his bed and wishes the ground would open up and swallow him whole. There’s a part of him—a huge part—that is screaming for him to run after her and beg her not to go and tell her they can figure this out. After all, they could do a long-distance relationship for the next two years (something he really wishes he would have remembered to point out when they were fighting last night). It’s not ideal—it’d be nice if the first few weeks of their relationship, at least, were spent in each other’s company—but it’s better than nothing.

But he can’t help but remember last night, when she all but begged him to come with her and he shouted at her and accused her of taking his dad’s side. Surely she’s angry with him. And besides, there’s no fix for this. Not a good one, anyway.

So he glumly gets up and glumly changes into fresh clothes—he’s running low on clean ones, he’ll need to find a laundry service—and glumly meanders into the kitchen and glumly gets himself a glass of water because there’s no food left in the house. He’ll need to find some breakfast. He’ll need to email his contact in Alfheim and accept the offer. He’ll need to start looking into an apartment there.

But he does none of that. What he does is return to his room and slouch on the edge of the bed for a few minutes, cursing his circumstances, cursing both of his fathers, cursing the fate that has crossed him and Sif so that they cannot be in the same city, despite having finally admitted their feelings for each other. And now they’ll go back to never speaking, only it will be worse this time, because this time they didn't just kiss, they admitted their feelings for each other, and he still ended up shouting at her that it was a mistake and driving her away.

The thought makes him scowl. But it also makes him remember something Sif said to him a few days ago: that she emailed him after he left Asgard. Curiosity consumes him, and he pulls open his laptop and navigates to an email account he has not opened in a year.

It’s got 138 unread messages, which is a lot, considering how carefully he used to avoid letting that address fall into the hands of spammers. About half are from Frigga, most of the rest from Odin and Thor. And there’s one, sent seven months ago from Sif Tyrsdottir, subject: Hey.

 _Hey,_ it reads,

_I think it’s pretty obvious by now that you’re ignoring any contact from your family. I don’t know if that extends to me, but I had to try. I want to tell you that I’m worried about you, and I miss you._

_I picture you reading that and thinking “Miss me? We only talk at Christmas anyway.” But the truth is that I miss you even when you’re not off who-knows-where for who-knows-what-reason. You matter to me, Loki, and I wish I’d made that more clear when we were in the same country. I wish I’d made that more clear when we were in the same neighborhood._

_I don’t know why you vanished, or why you won’t answer any of Thor’s texts, or why your parents look so sad these days. And I won’t ask, unless you want to tell me. But I will say that if you ever want to talk about any of it, I’m here. And even if you don’t, I really wish you would do something or say something, just to let me know you’re still alive. Even if it’s just responding to this email to tell me to leave you alone. Although I hope you don’t tell me that._

_Sif_

Loki stares at it for a long while, wishing he’d seen this earlier, wondering what else he’s missed by ignoring these messages. His curiosity swells again, and he goes back into his inbox and starts opening emails, starting just after he left Asgard.

From Frigga: _Dearest, I don’t have the words to tell you how sorry I am that we didn’t tell you the truth. But we truly thought we were doing the right thing, trying to keep you from feeling like you weren’t our son, when nothing could be farther from the truth . . ._

From Odin: _Loki, my boy, I am so sorry that my behavior made you think that I love Thor best. I have treated him differently, that is true, because I have always intended to make him CEO of my company when I retire. And I told myself that this justified my treating him differently. But I couldn’t have been more wrong, as you were right to point out . . ._

From Thor: _Lokes, what’s going on? You’ve never gone this long without answering my texts, and Mum and Dad are acting really weird . . ._

And then he skips ahead to the last month, where he sees that Thor has apparently started sending him periodic updates, just in case he wants to catch up on his life: _I finally took my Christmas tree down. I left it up longer than usual this year. Just needed that extra Christmas spirit, I guess. Although I don’t know why, since looking at the tree just reminded me that this was our first Christmas without you. I’m sorry, Lokes, I know I promised no more talk like that . . ._

From Frigga: _I don’t know if you ever read these, but I have to keep trying; you clearly got rid of your phone. This has been a long, cold winter. Your father keeps suggesting we go to the beach house in Alfheim, but I just don’t know if I’m in the mood . . ._

And from Odin, only nine days ago: _This is my usual reminder that I love you, I miss you, and I’m sorry. This has been a long year, and the cold is making it much worse; I’ve been trying to convince your mother to take a vacation to the house in Alfheim, but she won’t leave. She hasn’t said as much, but I suspect she’s afraid that if we leave, somehow we’ll miss you reaching out to us. I have to admit that I have the same fear . . ._

As the computer screen before him dissolves in a curtain of tears, Loki reflects to himself that he’s cried more in the past week than he has in ages.

He drops his head in his hands, and for the first time in over a year, he allows himself to admit just how much he’s missed Frigga and Thor, and even Odin, a little. He allows himself to feel the longing for home that he has long buried under his anger and his resentment and his obsessive focus on his work.

For a long few moments, he’s nothing but a knot of conflicting feelings and desires. He wants to see Frigga and Thor and Odin again, but he also wants to make a point to them. He wants to forgive, but he also wants to clutch all his old hurts and his anger to his chest like a shield. But then, cutting through the haze in his mind, he hears Sif’s words from yesterday: “What are you really mad about? And who are you really mad at? And what do you really want, and do you feel like your current behavior is in line with all of the above?”

He takes a deep breath and makes himself answer.

He’s been mad at Odin, for favoring Thor; he’s been mad at Frigga for not doing anything about it. But he is also willing, as Coulson always encouraged him, to be open to the possibility that his perceptions are tainted by his own biases, and he is willing to admit that he is tired of allowing his anger to dictate his life.

What he wants on a superficial level is to punish Odin for the way he's always treated him, but what he really wants, deep down, is to be happy. What he really wants is to be loved, and to be with the people he loves. He wants Frigga and—no, he wants _his family_ back in his life, or at least he wants Thor and Frigga back in his life, and he’s willing to tolerate contact with Odin to do it (and on some level, he's willing to be open to the possibility of things with Odin improving). And he wants Sif.

And his current behavior is not in line with any of the above, and to carry on down this path will only guarantee that he does not get any of the things he truly wants.

A weight falls from his shoulders as he admits as much, and he shoves his laptop and his phone in his bag, turns off all the lights, and rushes from the apartment.

The roads are clear enough for the taxis to be out in full force, and he’s lucky enough to get one with a young, bored-looking driver who perks up when Loki shoves a fistful of Jotun cash in his face and exclaims “The airport! As fast as you can!”

A harrowing taxi ride, a long phone call, and an astonishing pile of money later, Loki is going through security at the Utgard International Airport with his heart pounding in his chest. If he was right about the flight that Sif is on, then they’ve got twenty-five minutes until they start boarding. If he was wrong . . . well then, he will find her in Gladsheim, he supposes. He’s got her phone number now, at least.

Fortunately, he was right: as he hurries up to gate A8, there’s Sif, standing by a potted plant and looking at something on her phone.

He swallows nervously, and then he approaches her.

“Sif.”

Her gaze snaps up to his, and his heart leaps when he sees hope in her eyes. “You left without a proper goodbye,” he says, and the look she gives him in return is amused but weary.

“Not my fault you wouldn’t open your door,” she says. “Besides, I’ve learned the hard way that you can’t have a real conversation with someone who won’t listen.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “People have told me—my _parents_ have told me that I have a hard time letting go of old hurts. You know, moving on. Being willing to change.”

She noticed him say “my parents,” he can tell from the dawning warmth in her expression. “I’m sorry too,” she says. “I lost my temper with you last night. I don’t entirely understand what you’re going through, and I should have tried to keep that in mind.”

He gives her a little half smile. “Thank you. But you’ve been right about a lot of things.”

“So why are you here?” she asks a little unsteadily.

He takes a deep breath and shows her his ticket. “I have a flight to Gladsheim to catch.”

Sif doesn’t say anything, but her eyes are shining with so much love and happiness that she doesn’t need to. Two steps forward is all it takes for her to wrap her arms around him, and then she’s kissing him, fervent and enthusiastic, and this might be their best kiss yet.

Even with the wolf-whistling passersby.

Much sooner than he’d like, he breaks the kiss and takes her hand.

“Where are we going?” she asks, her face wreathed in a giddy smile.

“Desk,” he says, and begins leading her in that direction. “I’ve got to see what I can do to get you upgraded.”

“Upgraded?”

“To be next to me in first class.” He presses a kiss to the back of the hand he’s holding tightly in his. “After all this, I don’t want to spend any more time away from you than I have to.”

. . . . . .

_Sif scowls as she drops onto the swing next to Loki._

_“Hi,” he says uncertainly, wondering about her mood. He’s only known Sif for a month, but every time he’s seen her until now, she’s been cheerful and smiling. “Are you mad?”_

_She crosses her arm and shoots an angry look over at the benches; Loki follows her gaze and sees their mothers chatting together. “Are you mad at your mum?”_

_She nods furiously._

_“Why?”_

_“I wanted to bring my football to the park,” she explains. “To play with you and Thor. But Mum says playing football isn’t very ladylike.”_

_“Ladylike?” Loki repeats. “What does that mean?”_

_“That I have to be a perfect lady, all the time, and wear dumb dresses and let her do my hair.”_

_“Why?”_

_“Because that’s what girls do.” She scowls harder and kicks at the bark beneath the swings. “She says I have to be a lady if I want a handsome man to fall in love with me someday.”_

_“Gross,” says Loki, who, at ten, has no interest whatsoever in falling in love. “Why would you want someone to fall in love with you?”_

_“So I can get married.” She says the last word with disgust._

_“We’re not old enough to get married,” Loki points out._

_“I know. When I grow up.”_

_“Ah,” says Loki. “You don’t want to get married?”_

_“No, if I have to wear dresses and curl my hair to get married. That’s stupid.”_

_It does seem stupid to Loki, and, wanting to be helpful, offers, “I’ll marry you. And I won’t make you wear dresses and curl your hair.”_

_For the first time since arriving today, Sif perks up. “Really?”_

_“Sure,” he shrugs. “When we’re grown up, we’ll get married.”_

_“Really?” she repeats._

_“I promise.”_

_Sif grins broadly at him. “Okay, deal,” she says, and sticks out her hand for him to shake. “Now let’s go to the slides. I want to play pirates.”_

_Both forget the conversation almost immediately._

_Neither suspects that someday, Loki will make good on his promise._

. . . . . .

At 3:30 that afternoon, Odin gets a call from Sif Tyrsdottir, asking if he can please meet her at a little bakery down the block from his office building. When she hangs up, she turns a smile on a nervous Loki. “He says he’ll be here in ten minutes.” She kisses him gently, then fixes his tie. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

He tries to believe her.

When the door to the bakery opens ten minutes later, Sif has made herself scarce, but Loki is waiting at a table in the corner. Odin’s gaze falls on him, and he looks as though the wind has been knocked from his chest. “My boy,” he whispers.

Loki rises to his feet and gestures at the empty chair across from, and Odin seats himself in it, looking as though he’d embrace Loki if he thought it would be received well.

“I’m back for Thor, and for Mum,” Loki says without preamble, and Odin nods, looking unsurprised but disappointed.

But Loki isn’t through. “But I’m also open to the possibility of working on—” he gestures between them a few times— “this. For Mum’s sake, and Thor’s. For the sake of keeping the peace, if I’m going to stay in Gladsheim.”

Odin’s expression brightens with hope.

“But not if things stay as they have been.”

“I understand,” says Odin promptly, looking very eager to agree to anything.

“Do you?” Loki responds, feeling suddenly very tired.

Odin doesn’t seem to know how to respond to that, but Loki doesn’t wait too long for him to think about it. He takes a deep breath, and then says, “I need you to understand where I’m at right now. I've spent a lot of our previous . . . let's call them discussions, making vague claims that you always do this or you never do that. I want to be clearer.”

And then he proceeds to give a concise overview of why he’s always felt so unwanted, so unloved, by his own father.

Some of it is specific: school events skipped, careless comments made. Some of it is patterns of behavior: that Odin was often too busy at work to spend time with him; that Odin rarely showed affection, that Odin seemed to prefer playing sports with Thor to playing make-believe with Loki.

It’s exhausting to reopen all those old wounds, but Loki is proud of the composure he keeps throughout. He’s never had a serious conversation with his father that didn’t end with him shouting, but that would have been very unhelpful here: he’s here to heal their relationship, not destroy it further.

So he keeps a cool head as he recounts events and his perceptions of those events. He can see, from Odin’s expressions, that he doesn’t agree with every interpretation of things that have passed between them, but he listens respectfully, and that leaves Loki feeling willing (someday, not today, today’s already been exhausting) to hear him out about his takes on what has passed between them.

And to his surprise, he finds he’s glad to think they’ll have a chance to have these important, hard conversations.

“I’ve never articulated this to you, which I realize is unhelpful,” Loki concludes. “So . . . here it is. Like I said, I am open to working on this relationship, but I think that’s going to need open communication and a lot of work.”

It can’t have been easy to hear all that, but to his surprise, his father is not furious with him; in fact, he smiles. “Your mother has us in family counseling,” he says. “Ever since . . . you left. If you would be open to it, I think it could be very good if you attended with us sometimes. Maybe Thor too, occasionally.”

Loki stares at him in surprise, having never for a moment imagined his gruff, old-fashioned father would agree to counseling. And then he nods. “I think that could be a very good idea.”

Odin smiles.

“So what now?” he asks.

“I’m going to go see Mum,” Loki says, and then hesitates; Sif recommended extending this olive branch, but he has a hard time believing it will go over the way she expects. “I . . . I don’t know if you need to finish out your workday, but I thought that maybe if you wanted, we could share a rideshare to the house.”

“I’d love to join you,” Odin says, to Loki’s surprise. “And Thor?”

Loki finds a pleased smile stealing across his face. “Sif said she’d text him and tell him to meet us at the house.”

Odin blinks. “Sif will, will she?” he asks, the corner of his mouth turning up in a badly suppressed smile.

Loki fights to keep down the absurdly pleased look that wants to fill his face, but he knows he’s not entirely successful. This time Odin doesn’t try to hide his smile.

“Sif will be riding home with us,” Loki says, doing a terrible job of not sounding absolutely thrilled and smitten.

“I will be glad to thank her for whatever part she played in any of this,” Odin says. He glances at his watch. “Are you ready to go now?”

Loki nods and stands from the table; Odin does the same, putting them within arm’s reach of each other. Both hesitate, and Loki wonders if Odin feels, as he does, that the moment calls for an embrace. But he’s not sure he wants that, and anyway this is his father, of all people, who has never liked a lot of physical contact— 

Odin lifts a hand and claps it on Loki's shoulder: not a hug, but sincere and warm.

Loki stares. And then his expression softens and he claps a hand to his father's upper arm: half a hug. Which is probably about where they're at right now.

“I’m glad you two have decided to stop being idiots,” says Sif from behind Odin, and both men grin.

The ride home is not as awkward as it could be, because Sif is there next to him, holding his hand, lending quiet support with her presence. They talk mostly of Jotunheim, and how they ended up crossing paths at the family’s apartment, while Odin listens. The only truly uncomfortable moment is when Odin says, a little hesitantly, “You know, if you want a director position, like Thor—”

“I don’t,” says Loki automatically. "I appreciate the offer, but I’d prefer to find something else. I like what I’ve been doing, and I like my independence, and besides, I think it might be better for our relationship if . . . we have a little distance. At least at first.”

And Odin nods resignedly.

All the while, the scenery around them is changing to those familiar buildings Loki has known his whole life, and he is surprised at how pleased he is to see it all again. He’s glad he got out and saw the world, but he’s also glad to see his childhood home again.

At the house, Odin and Sif hang back to allow Loki to greet his mother alone. They end up standing awkwardly on the front walk for quite a while, because when Frigga opens the door and sees Loki standing there, she dissolves into tears and doesn’t recover for quite some time. Loki hugs her tightly and feels tears seep from his own eyes, and regrets his stubbornness in staying away so long. Undoubtedly he and Frigga’s relationship will benefit from counseling as well; he accused her of never defending him against his father’s inattentiveness, but he has come to suspect that this might be another situation where his perceptions of reality were tainted by his own biases; he doesn't know what went on behind closed doors. This much he knows: Frigga always loved him, always supported him, no matter what decision he was making. And she deserves better treatment than he gave her. So he whispers apologies into her hair and she hugs him tighter.

“I’m home, Mum,” he reassures her when she pulls back to stare at him, like she can’t believe he’s really there. “I’m going to look for a job in Gladsheim. And, umm, I think I’m dating Sif.”

Frigga laughs through her tears at that. “Finally! I used to watch you two tiptoe around each other when you both came home for Christmas and wonder if you were ever going to get around to talking about your feelings.”

He laughs too, and hugs her again.

Thor gets to the house a few minutes after they’ve all finally settled in the sitting room. Sif clearly gave him no hints as to why he needed to rush to his parents’ house, and when his gaze falls on Loki, his eyes go so big and wide that Loki’s afraid they’re going to fall out of his head.

“Hey,” Loki says, rising slowly to his feet. “Umm. I think I owe you the biggest apology of all. You didn’t do anything wrong, and—”

Thor takes two giant steps across the room and wraps Loki in a bear hug so tight that he can hardly breathe. Loki finds that he’s not that interested in breathing at the moment anyway.

When they finally break their embrace, Thor looks away embarrassedly, dashing the tears from his cheeks.

“Hey,” Loki says, feeling his own eyes water, “real men aren’t afraid to cry.”

“I’ve taught you well!” Sif says, sounding pleased.

So the brothers cry. Sif cries a little. Frigga hasn’t stopped crying since Loki showed up. And even Odin’s eyes get suspiciously bright.

Half an hour later, they are sitting at the dining room table with take-out in front of them; Frigga had not planned on having so many guests tonight, so take-out is the only way to feed them all. Loki looks around at his mother and father smiling warmly at him from either end of the table, at Thor beaming at him across the floral centerpiece, at Sif by his side, her hand grasping his warmly. And he can’t help smiling.

“You seem happy,” Sif observes softly.

His smile grows. “It’s just good to be home.”

. . . . . .

fin


End file.
